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UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

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EDWARD    E.   HALE. 


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EVERY-DAY    SERMONS, 


BY 


EDWARD    E.    HALE,   D.D., 

Minister  South   Congregational  Church,  Boston. 


"Teaching-  tliem  to  observe  all  things  whatsoever  I   have  commanded 
you;   and,  lo,  1  am  with  you  alway,  even  unto  the  end  of  the  world." 

Matt,  xxviii.  20. 


Jf4r  /^iTi 


BOSTON: 
J.     STILMAN     SMITH 
3    Hamilton'   Place. 
1892. 


CO., 


CONTENTS. 


The   Worth   of    Enthusiasm 

What   think   ye   of   Christ? 

Five    Questions    . 

Father,  Son,  and    Holy   Spirit 

How    Immortals    Live 

Imitators   of    God 

Installation  of  Rev.  John  Cuckson 


Pagb 

3 
17 
31 
45 
59 
71 
83 


THE  WORTH   OF  ENTHUSIASM. 


"  I  have  given  )ou  authority  to  tread  upon  serpents  and 
scorpions,  and  over  all  the  power  of  the  enemy ;  and  noth- 
ing shall  by  any  means  hurt  you."  —  Luke  x.  19. 

It  is  a  vivid  statement,  in  prophetic  symbolism, 
of  the  sway  of  their  enthusiasm  over  the  obstacles 
which  were  to  come  before  them.  The  history 
of  those  centuries  more  than  makes  good  the 
prophecy.  These  people,  forgetting  themselves, 
and  determined  to  bring  in  the  kingdom  of  God, 
went  forward,  conquering  and  to  conquer ;  and  it 
was  as  he  said,  —  the  annoying  serpents  and  scor- 
pions, who  are  in  the  pathway  of  such  travellers, 
should  not  hinder  them  so  but  that  they  should 
succeed.  If  you  talk  to-day  to  any  low-toned  per- 
son who  has  been  in  the  West  Indies,  he  will  tell 
you  of  the  abomination  of  the  scorpions  who  per- 
haps stray  upon  your  pillows,  and  of  the  terror  of 
the  serpents  who  infest  the  forests.  But  for  all 
that,  when  the  Spanish  race  landed  there,  deter- 
mined to  find  gold,  they  went  forward  to  success, 
—  they  trod  upon  the  serpents  and  the  scorpions, 
and  they  do  not  so  much  as  appear  in  their 
history. 


4  THE   WORTH    OF   ENTHUSIASM. 

Here,  then,  is  Christ's  statement  of  the  ag- 
gressive power  of  Christian  jsnthusiasm.  It  is  a 
statement  made  in  advance,  and  we  may  make  a 
like  statement  as  we  look  backward  upon  the 
course  of  history.  Just  at  this  moment  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking world  is  called  upon  to  ask  whether 
it  believes  that  this  statement  is  still  true,  or 
whether  the  more  mechanical  processes  of  the 
nineteenth  century  have  gained  such  control  of 
society  that  we  can  no  longer  rely  upon  it.  The 
square  statement  which  General  Booth  makes,  in 
this  remarkable  book  of  his,  "  In  Darkest  Eng- 
land," is  that  he  and  his  are  able  to  tread  on  the 
serpents  and  scorpions  which  have  deterred  other 
people  in  their  efforts  to  clean  up  the  dark  places 
of  London,  and  to  bring  in  the  light  of  a  decent 
civilization  in  their  place.  To  this  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  and  Mr.  Huxley  and  the  people, 
whom  I  may  call  the  regulation  philanthropists, 
reply  that  it  is  quite  impossible.  They  say  that 
there  are  a  great  many  serpents  in  the  way,  and  a 
great  many  very  annoying  scorpions  in  the  way. 
They  tell  how  large  the  scorpions  are,  —  they 
have  measured  some  of  them.  And  they  tell  how 
bad  the  bite  of  the  serpents  is,  and  they  say  that, 
with  such  obstacles  in  the  way,  it  is  idle  to  under- 
take to  relieve  these  difficulties.  They  say  the 
serpents  must  be  killed  and  the  scorpions  stifled 
first;  and  yet  they  do  not  show  any  method  of 
killing  the  serpents  or  of  stifling  the  scorpions.     It 


THE   WORTH    OF   ENTHUSIASM.  5 

is  quite  as  in  the  Book  of  Proverbs  it  is  said  that 
the  sluggard  says,  there  is  a  lion  in  the  path.  Not 
that  it  is  fair  to  say  that  the  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury or  Mr.  Huxley  are  either  of  them  in- 
dolent men.  But  it  is  quite  fair  to  say  that  the 
lions  which  they  see  out  of  their  windows,  or  think 
they  see,  are  so  hungry  and  noisy  that  they  dare 
not  leave  palace  or  college  to  go  out  to  attack 
them. 

General  Booth  does.  General  Booth  says  that 
he  has  an  army  of  fanatics  at  his  disposal,  who 
will  do  what  he  tells  them  to  do,  and  that  the  en- 
thusiasm of  their  Christian  faith  is  so  great  that  it 
will  enable  them  to  overcome  the  inconveniences 
which  they  find  in  their  way.  He  does  not  use 
the  particular  figure  which  the  Saviour  uses,  of 
serpents  and  scorpions.  He  knows  that  the  nine- 
teenth century  prefers  to  have  square  statements 
of  the  visible  fact.  It  does  not  like  this  form  of 
Oriental  imagery,  and  it  considers  it  quite  out  of 
the  way.  So  he  devotes  himself,  with  more  or 
less  statistical  statement,  such  as  the  nineteenth 
century  does  like,  to  show  how  he  can  take  the 
tramps  who  have  gathered  together  in  the  worst 
regions  of  London ;  how  he  can  embody  them 
under  a  certain  military  form ;  how  he  can  march 
them  into  the  country,  and  place  them  on  farms 
which  we  should  think  ridiculously  small ;  how  he 
can  set  them  upon  market- gardening;  or,  at  the 
least,  how  every  man  with  a  spade  can  earn  his 


6  THE   WORTH   OF  ENTHUSIASM. 

own  ration.  This,  at  bottom,  is  the  plan  for 
darkest  England  which  General  Booth  proposes. 
And  for  this  plan  he  is  now  engaged  in  collecting 
five  hundred  thousand  dollars  as  a  capital  stock, 
and  an  annual  income  of  one  hundred  fifty  thou- 
sand dollars  to  carry  it  forward,  till,  in  its  success, 
it  shall  support  itself.  I  have  not  observed  that 
he  once  speaks  of  it  as  an  experiment.  He  speaks 
with  the  definiteness  with  which  the  Saviour  of 
men  himself  speaks.  He  says  that  they  have 
divine  power  with  them,  that  they  will  tread  on  all 
the  serpents,  that  they  will  stifle  all  the  scorpions, 
and  that  nothing  shall  by  any  means  hurt  them  as 
they  go  about  this  endeavor. 

It  will  be  my  duty  in  another  place  to  speak  of 
the  detail  of  General  Booth's  plans,  as  far  as  it 
seems  useful  for  us  to  consider  them.  Our  busi- 
ness this  morning  is  with  the  emphatic  reliance 
which  the  Saviour  places  upon  men's  enthusiasm 
for  mankind,  in  his  promises  of  that  coming  king- 
dom to  which  we  look  forward.  In  the  contrast 
between  the  races  of  men,  it  is  generally  supposed 
that  the  people  of  that  race  who  were  called  the 
descendants  of  Shem,  of  that  race  by  whom  he 
was  himself  surrounded,  have  more  of  that  work- 
ing enthusiasm  than  has  fallen  to  the  share  of  the 
great  Aryan  race  of  which  we  are,  or  to  the  Eastern 
races  of  which  the  Chinese  and  Japanese  are,  the 
best  representatives,  or  to  that  race  which  has 
always  been  at  the  bottom,  which  makes   up  the 


THE   WORTH   OF  ENTHUSIASM.  J 

nations  of  Africa.  Thus  it  is  observed  that  all 
the  religions  of  the  world  have  come  from  Western 
or  Southern  Asia,  and  a  great  deal  more  than  is 
worth  while  has  been  made  of  this  coincidence. 
For  myself,  I  suppose  that  religion  is  the  natural 
tie  between  the  child  and  the  father.  I  suppose 
that  it  expresses  the  natural  relation  of  man  with 
God.  And  I  do  not  believe,  therefore,  that  there 
was  any  more  religion  in  Abraham  than  there  was 
in  Massasoit,  or  in  Cetewayo,  or  in  Abraham 
Lincoln.  The  mere  accidental  expression  must 
not  be  overstated.  But  with  such  speculation  we 
have  here  little  to  do.  Let  us  rather  notice  that 
there  has  been  enthusiasm  enough  in  our  race  to 
do  everything  that  the  Scripture  gives  in  the  list 
of  the  triumphs  of  the  children  of  Abraham. 
The  men  of  our  race,  when  they  were  set  to  do  it, 
"  have  subdued  kingdoms,  have  wrought  right- 
eousness, have  obtained  promises,  have  stopped 
the  mouths  of  lions,  have  quenched  the  violence 
of  fire,  out  of  weakness  have  been  made  strong, 
have  waxed  valiant  in  the  fight,  and  have  put  to 
flight  the  armies  of  the  aliens."  I  would  not  ask 
for  better  examples  of  enthusiasm  and  daring  than 
were  given  us  by  Columbus  and  his  men,  or  by 
Cortez  and  his.  I  would  not  ask  for  enthusiasm 
more  pronounced  than  that  which  sent  our  fore- 
fathers to  Plymouth,  or  that  which  set  Ann  Lee's 
disciples  to  make  gardens  out  of  deserts.  There 
is  no  lack  of  enthusiasm  if  there  is  anybody  to 


8  THE   WORTH    OF   ENTHUSIASM. 

Start  enthusiasm,  and  you  have  only  to  go  this 
afternoon  to  hear  the  words  spoken  in  the  Salva- 
tion Army,  or  you  have  only  to  go  to-morrow  to 
see  what  those  people  are  doing  in  the  slums  of 
Boston,  to  see  that  whatever  else  they  lack,  they 
do  not  lack  enthusiasm,  because  they  speak  the 
English  language  or  are  born  in  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race.  It  is  possibly  true,  however,  that  a  certain 
timidity  or  shyness  belongs  to  people  of  English 
descent.  It  is  the  cause  of  their  inability  to  ex- 
press all  they  feel,  so  that,  when  John  Foster's  son 
dies,  he  tells  his  father  that  it  is  only  within  that 
half-hour  that  he  has  had  any  conception  of  how 
much  his  father  loved  him. 

We  are  constantly  hearing  of  such  instances. 
The  false  shame,  as  the  French  call  it,  of  the 
Englishman,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  of  his 
successors  in  New  England,  keeps  his  lips  closed, 
so  that  he  does  not  tell  his  friend  how  much  he 
loves  him,  he  does  not  tell  how  large  are  his  plans, 
he  is  afraid  to  be  called  a  fanatic,  and  conceals 
from  the  world  his  very  noblest  aspirations.  All 
the  same,  however,  it  is  to  be  observed  that  this 
race  goes  into  crusades  under  the  lead  of  Peter 
the  Hermit,  that  it  compasses  sea  and  land  when 
it  is  led  by  Columbus  or  by  Magellan,  or  in  our 
times  by  Hayes  or  by  Greeley.  The  pent-up 
enthusiasm  which  did  not  find  language,  exists  in 
some  magnificent  outburst  of  concentrated  effort. 
In  the  instance  to  which  I  have  alluded,  General 


THE   WORTH    OF    ENTHUSIASM.  9 

Booth  is  relying  upon  this  concentrated  enthu- 
siasm, working  under  such  regulation  and  disci- 
pline as  he  has  established  for  his  arm/.  I  do  not 
myself  believe  that  we  need  here  a  great  deal  of 
that  especial  form  of  the  Salvation  Army.  Fortu- 
nately for  us,  we  have  solved  a  good  many  of 
the  problems  which  England  has  still  to  solve, 
and  there  has  thus  resulted  a  sort  of  prosperity 
for  each  and  every  class  here  which  in  England 
seems  to  belong  only  on  the  higher  circles  of  their 
social  order.  While  I  recognize,  therefore,  with 
gratitude,  what  these  humble  and  despised  people 
are  doing,  here  in  Boston,  in  New  York,  and  in 
our  other  cities,  I  do  not  believe  we  need  to  call 
upon  them  to  work  any  such  miracles  as  General 
Booth  is  calling  for  there.  But  you  and  I  ought 
to  remember  that,  for  the  great  problems  which 
are  before  us  now,  we  have  in  reserve  just  such  a 
reservoir,  shall  I  say,  of  human  power,  which  can 
do  literally  what  it  will  in  the  reformation  of  the 
world  and  the  improvement  of  society,  when  once 
it  sees  what  the  needs  of  the  social  order  are,  and 
when  once  it  knows  that  the  good  God  calls  for 
such  miracles. 

A  venerable  friend  of  ours  listened  uneasily  to 
some  of  the  poor  materialism  which  tries  to  ac- 
count for  manhood  and  its  victories  by  talk  about 
phosphorus  and  electricity.  He  waited  impatiently 
till  he  had  a  right  to  speak,  and  then  said,  "  John, 
you  do  not  believe  that  the  uprising  of  America  in 


lO  THE   WORTH   OF  ENTHUSIASM. 

1 86 1,  when  this  people  as  one  man  swept  away  all 
obstacles,  —  one  man,  indeed,  for  union  and  free- 
dom,—  you  do  not  believe  that  this  was  nothing 
but  the  consentaneous  ticking  of  ten  million  pen- 
dulums !  It  was  the  enthusiastic  determination  of 
ten  million  children  of  God."  Now  such  enthu- 
siasm is  a  power  as  distinctly  to  be  relied  upon  as 
is  the  rising  of  the  tide  or  the  flow  of  a  river.  And 
any  statesman  or  reformer  does  not  know  the  alpha- 
bet of  his  business  who  does  not  rely  upon  it,  as  the 
Law  to  which  the  God  of  History  has  intrusted 
the  advance  and  enlightenment  of  his  world. 

It  is  desirable  to  remember  this,  and  to  illustrate 
it,  that  we  may  always  look  forward  to  large  suc- 
cesses. Only  those  who  have  scanty  resources, 
finite  and  fallible,  will  be  satisfied  with  small  plans. 
"  We  will  abolish  slavery,"  said  the  Abolitionist. 
And  they  did  so.  "  We  will  make  the  desert 
blossom  like  the  rose,"  said  Daniel  Boone  and  Ma- 
nasseh  Cutler.  And  they  did  so.  "  We  will  cover 
this  land  with  a  net-work  of  railways,"  said  another 
forward-looking  army  of  inventors.  And  they  did 
so.  They  trod  on  serpents  and  scorpions,  if  you 
please ;  but  they  had  that  enthusiasm  which  per- 
mits men  to  do  so,  —  "so  that  nothing  shall  by 
any  means  hurt  you."  For  the  future,  we  have 
the  same  rights  to  do  large  things  rather  than 
small.  "  It  is  often  easier  to  do  a  great  thing  than 
a  little  one."  Thus,  when  John  Adams  says  that 
in  America  every  man  and  woman  should  have  a 


THE   WORTH    OF  ENTHUSIASM.  II 

liberal  education,  he  proposes  a  condition  wholly 
unknown  in  his  time,  wholly  unknown  in  ours,  but 
definite  and  possible  to  the  power  of  genuine  en- 
thusiasm. When  some  man  tells  you  that  you 
ought  to  abolish  pauperism,  that  it  is  a  disease  to  be 
trampled  out  like  leprosy  or  like  small-pox,  you  are 
not  to  send  him  to  an  insane  hospital,  but  you  are 
to  rely  on  this  infinite  power,  as  you  address  your- 
selves to  the  work  which  so  great  a  purpose  de- 
mands. Stupendous  difficulty?  Yes;  but,  as  God 
orders,  I  have  stupendous  power.  This  power,  pent 
up  and  available,  was  given  me  for  use.  It  is  not 
meant  for  nothing.  We  will  turn  it  on  this  ob- 
stacle. The  obstacle  shall  give  way.  If  we  are 
sons  and  daughters  of  the  Living  God,  going  and 
coming  with  his  Infinite  Commission,  we  will  do 
something  which  is  worth  doing. 

We  will  do  something  worth  doing,  —  that  is 
the  resolution  for  you  and  me.  We  do  not  call 
ourselves  reformers.  We  do  not,  I  suppose,  re- 
gard ourselves  as  professed  philanthropists.  There 
are  things  which  we  should  be  glad  to  have  done, 
which  we  leave  for  other  people  to  do.  Thus,  we 
should  be  very  glad  to  have  Jerusalem  taken  out 
of  the  hands  of  the  Turk.  But  we  do  not  go  about 
preaching  to  people  to  ask  them  to  go  to  Jerusalem 
and  drive  the  Turk  out.  When  we  ask  people  to 
take  the  cross  and  bear  it,  we  have  other  objects 
nearer  home.  It  is  much  more  my  business  and 
yours  to  see  that  Boston  is  decently  governed  than 


12  THE   WORTH    OF   ENTHUSIASM. 

that  Jerusalem  is.  And  very  likely  the  place  that 
you  and  I  have  in  that  business  maybe  in  teaching 
a  child  to  sew  in  the  Parmenter  Street  Chapel,  or 
taking  a  newsboy  on  a  sleigh-ride  around  the 
Reservoir.  But  sewing  or  sleigh-ride,  ward-meet- 
ing or  public  speech,  you  and  I  are  not  going  to 
see  any  of  the  large  successes,  unless  we  ally 
ourselves  with  large  plans,  and  unless  we  rely  on 
this  reserved  enthusiasm  which  works  the  mira- 
cles. We  shall  not  make  people  temperate  by 
taking  slates  to  them,  and  calculating  that  whiskey 
costs  more  than  clothing.  We  shall  make  them 
temperate  by  quickening  the  divine  fire  till  it 
blazes,  by  giving  it  new  fuel  that  it  may  burn 
higher,  by  piling  into  it  this  thing  or  that  which 
tempts  to  wrong,  so  that  the  temptations  may  be 
destroyed.  This  sacrifice,  by  the  way,  is  what 
"  enthusiasm  "  originally  meant.  It  is  what  the 
sceptics  and  machine  people  cannot  understand. 
But  it  is  involved  in  the  great  principle  which 
wins  all  the  victories. 

Thank  God,  and  thank  the  enthusiasm  of  our 
fanatic  fathers,  we  have  not  the  problem  which 
General  Booth  is  facing  so  gallantly.  Not  one  man, 
woman,  or  child  in  Boston  slept  last  night  in  quar- 
ters as  noisome  and  wretched  as  fifty  thousand 
people  in  London  were  trying  to  sleep  in  at  the 
same  time.  But  there  were  bad  enough  places 
here.  I  can  show  you  —  any  leader  in  the  minis- 
try at  large  or  in   the  Salvation  Army  can  show 


THE   WORTH   OF   ENTHUSIASM.  1 3 

you  — places  where  people  did  sleep  which  it  shall 
make  you  weep  to  see.  And  we  have  our  other 
failures,  for  which  no  fathers  have  provided.  Dis- 
eases running  rampant,  which  might  be  trampled 
out.  Ignorance,  almost  proud  that  it  is  ignorant. 
Labor,  crowded  just  where  it  is  not  wanted,  and 
wanted  just  where  it  does  not  come.  Wealth  un^ 
told,  in  the  hands  of  those  who  are  so  stupid  that 
they  do  not  know  that  wealth,  as  wealth,  is  merely 
vulgar.  Learning  untold,  in  the  brains  of  people 
who  do  not  know  that  learning  is  only  a  morbid 
disease,  unless  it  is  shared  to  the  last  fraction  with 
all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men.  Life  in  the  midst 
of  plenty,  which  does  not  know  how  to  live.  A 
country  drunk  with  its  own  prosperity,  which  hardly 
knows  how  to  use  its  riches,  and  yet,  like  other 
drunkards,  staggers  on  and  asks  for  more.  Now, 
it  is  over  such  mountains,  and  in  spite  of  them, 
that  you  and  I,  and  others  like  us,  are  to  carry  the 
car  of  the  Living  God.  He  means  that  his  treas- 
ures shall  be  scattered  right  and  left.  He  means 
that  health  shall  be  as  sure  in  every  home  as  it  is 
now  in  the  palaces  of  favored  princes.  He  means 
that  ripe  learning,  and  the  joy  of  understanding  his 
work,  shall  be  everywhere,  as  certain  as  it  is  now  in 
colleges  or  in  libraries.  He  means  that  no  man 
shall  sulk  in  a  miser's  wretchedness,  counting  his 
gold  and  weighing  his  silver,  but  that  that  miser, 
most  wretched  of  all,  shall  be  exalted  to  the  luxury 
of  leading,  teaching,   spending,  relieving,  and  re- 


14  THE   WORTH   OF   ENTHUSIASM. 

ceiving  the  blessings  of  his  fellow-men.  You  and 
I,  among  others,  are  set  to  this  business  of  hewing 
down  such  mountains  and  building  up  such  valleys. 
We  shall  succeed  if  we  aim  high  enough.  We 
shall  fail  if  we  accept  things  as  they  are.  We 
shall  succeed  if  we  trust  the  wave  of  enthusiasm 
of  those  who  are  born  from  God,  and  try  to  live 
and  move  and  have  their  being  in  him.  We 
shall  fail  if  we  only  find  fault  with  other  people's 
plans,  —  if  we  do  nothing  but  say  the  work  is 
hard  to  do.  Certainly  we  shall  fail  if  we  suppose 
that  wrong  will  right  itself;  that  falsehood  will 
teach  people  to  tell  the  truth ;  that  bribery  will 
make  man  pure;  or,  in  general,  if  we  think  it 
wise  to  let  things  alone.  And,  for  ourselves,  we 
shall  be  strong  and  confident  if  we  seek  God 
to  help  us ;  —  for  then  we  shall  find  him.  We 
shall  be  faint  and  weak  if  we  do  not  seek  him, 
for  then  even  his  Omnipotence  will  find  it  hard  to 
set  our  pulses  beating.  What  you  and  I  need  is 
with  each  breath  of  life  to  come  "  Nearer,  Great 
God,  to  thee,"  —  not  simply,  as  the  hymn  says  so 
well,  in  any  flight  through  space,  but  in  these  rela- 
tions of  life,  just  as  intimate,  of  Monday  morn- 
ing and  Tuesday  afternoon.  I  am  talking  to  a 
stranger  in  the  street-car.  Yes  —  and  the  God  of 
Heaven  is  the  third  person  in  the  interview.  I 
am  standing  at  an  open  grave.  Yes  —  and  the 
Father  of  perfect  love  holds  me,  so  that  I  may  not 
die  in  my  wretchedness.     I  am  before  an  audience 


THE   WORTH   OF   ENTHUSIASM.  1 5 

which  distrusts  and  doubts  me.  Speak  by  my 
Hps,  Father,  and  compel  them  to  understand.  Or 
I  have  this  child  to  amuse,  who  is  fretful  and  over- 
bearing. Father  of  my  life,  show  me  how  to 
attend  to  her  as  wisely  as  you  have  cared  for  me. 
The  man  who  has  fairly  sought  for  this  Infinite 
Companionship  has  found  it.  That  man  has 
found  that  the  lions  in  the  way  receded  before  him. 
He  has  not  found  that  the  gnats  from  the  foliage, 
or  the  little  ants  from  their  burrows,  or  the  beetles 
who  flew  across  his  path,  really  hindered  him. 
He  trod  on  serpents  and  scorpions,  and  they  did 
not  hurt  him.  He  did  not  succeed  by  this  method, 
or  that  method.  It  was  not  that  one  plan  was  so 
much  wiser  than  another,  for  this  was  no  affair  of 
plan.  It  was  not  one  or  another  contrivance  of 
machinery.  It  was  a  question  how  Infinite  Power 
should  be  brought  to  compel  the  machinery. 
And  this  man,  in  his  unselfish  enthusiasm,  was  the 
living  partner  of  the  Living  God  ! 


WHAT  THINK   YE    OF    CHRIST? 


"  What  think  ye  of  the  Christ?   whose  son  is  he?  " 

Matthew  xxii.    43. 

The  first  half  of  this  text  was  selected  by  Father 
Ignatius  for  his  discourse,  when  he  preached  in 
this  pulpit  three  weeks  since.  With  that  curious 
indifference  to  historical  accuracy  which  seems 
to  stamp  enthusiasts,  he  omitted  the  last  half  of 
the  text,  and  made  no  illusion  to  the  incident 
described.  This  was  a  pity.  For,  as  he  wanted 
to  interest  us  in  the  real  history  of  Jesus,  it  would 
have  seemed  natural  to  tell  us  why  Jesus  asked 
the  question  of  the  text  on  this  occasion,  when  he 
never  asked  it  of  the  same  people  on  any  other 
occasion.  For  the  subject  Father  Ignatius  was  dis- 
cussing, it  is  a  very  curious  observation  that  the 
Saviour  himself  was  so  indifferent  as  to  men's 
questions  or  thoughts  about  him.  He  once  asked 
his  apostles  what  the  multitude  thought  about  him. 
On  this  occasion  he  does  not  even  speak  of  himself. 
He  asks  a  general  question  as  to  the  Messiah  whom 
all  expected.  Whose  son  shall  the  Messiah  be? 
Must  he  be  David's  son?  "Whose  son  is  he, — 
the  son  of  David  or  the  son  of  God?"  For  the 
rest  he  said  squarely,  "  It  is  my  Father  who  does 


1 8  WHAT  THINK   YE   OF   CHRIST? 

the  works.  It  is  the  Holy  Spirit  who  speaks  the 
word.  If  any  man  blasphemes  me,  he  may  be 
forgiven."  He  even  chides  his  disciples  because 
they  can  do  nothing  without  him.  He  sinks  his 
own  personality.  As  Paul  says  so  well,  "  He 
makes  himself  of  no  reputation.  He  takes  upon 
himself  the  form  of  a  servant."  You  might 
say  he  is  quite  indifferent  how  men  define  his 
naturo  or  his  position  if  only  they  will  follow  him. 

You  might  say  he  is  absolutely  indifferent  to 
this  question,  "What  think  ye  of  Christ?"  which 
we  are  now  told  is  the  most  important  question  of  all. 
If  you  read  the  four  Gospels  for  the  first  time,  and 
merely  addressed  yourself  to  the  question  of  what 
he  did  think  important,  you  would  say  at  once 
that  his  whole  heart  and  soul  were  put  on  bring- 
ing in  the  kingdom  of  God. 

There  is,  as  I  said,  one  and  only  one  central 
passage  where  he  gave  to  us  his  own  statement. 
Curiously  enough,  again,  this  passage  is  now 
coolly  rejected  by  those  who  are  most  eager  to 
extol  his  authority.  When  they  were  all  driven 
out  of  Galilee,  when  they  had  taken  refuge  in  a 
foreign  dominion,  he  asked  the  twelve  who  they 
thought  he  was.  Simon  Peter  promptly  an- 
swered, "  Thou  art  the  Christ,  the  son  of  the 
living  God."  Jesus  praised  him  for  the  answer; 
he  said  he  would  build  his  Church  on  that 
answer,  —  that  that  answer  should  be  sufficient 
for  the  foundation  of  the  Church,  and  that  on  a 


WHAT   THINK    YE   OF   CHRIST?  1 9 

church  SO  built  hell  would  have  no  power.  "  Thou 
art  the  Christ,  the  son  of  the  living  God." 

How  extraordinary  it  is,  if  Peter  made  the 
wrong  reply,  —  as  we  are  now  told  he  did,  —  if 
Peter  should  have  said,  "  Thou  art  the  hving 
God,"  as  the  creeds  of  the  fifth  century  would 
have  him  say !  How  extraordinary  that  this  cen- 
tral occasion  should  have  been  lost,  nay,  should 
have  been  worse  than  lost !  How  extraordinary 
that  Peter  should  say  Jesus  was  the  son  of  God, 
if  he  were  God  himself!  This  failure  can  only  be 
accounted  for  on  the  ground  which  our  friend 
Dr.  Huntington  takes,  the  Bishop  of  Syracuse, 
when  he  says  that  Peter  did  not  himself  then  know 
who  the  Saviour  was,  and  only  found  out  after  the 
Saviour  had  died. 

As  to  our  text  itself,  it  is  only  interesting  in  what 
I  may  almost  call  the  dramatic  sequence  of  events  ; 
because  it  illustrates  the  Saviour's  steady  determi- 
nation to  put  down,  even  by  ridicule,  that  Jewish 
prejudice  which  made  out  the  children  of  Abraham 
to  be  the  only  people  in  the  world  worth  thinking 
of.  I  have  read  the  whole  passage,  as  Father  Igna- 
tius did  not,  that  you  might  see  this  determina- 
tion of  his,  and  how  important  it  is  that  the  two 
parts  of  this  text  shall  be  kept  together.  Here 
was  this  Jewish  superstition,  that  when  God  chose 
to  send  his  messenger,  when  the  Christ  should 
come,  he  must  be  of  the  line  of  David.  The  same 
superstition  shows  itself  in  those  long  genealogies 


20  WHAT   THINK   YE   OF   CHRIST? 

with  which  the  Gospels  of  Matthew  and  of  Luke 
begin,  in  which,  by  different  lines,  Christ's  birth  is 
traced  back  to  David,  to  show  that  he  fulfilled  the 
Jewish  condition.  But  the  Saviour  himself  shows 
indifference  to  this  tradition.  When  they  say  at 
once  that  the  Christ  must  be  the  son  of  David,  he 
says  in  reply,  "  Why,  David  calls  him  '  Lord.' 
David  admits  that  he  himself  is  inferior  to  any  one 
who  comes  direct  from  God.  And  do  you  mean 
that  David  requires  a  genealogical  descent  from 
himself  of  one  who  is  to  be  the  King  of  kings,  and 
Lord  of  lords?  "  The  incident  is  only  one  of  many 
on  which  he  presses  hard  upon  that  provincialism 
of  the  Jews.  "  God  is  able  of  these  stones  to  raise 
up  children  unto  Abraham."  "  The  publicans  and 
the  harlots  shall  go  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
before  you."  Yes,  the  Gentiles,  who  are  like  beggars 
out  in  the  highway,  they  shall  be  received  at  the 
feast  when  the  children  of  Abraham  are  left  out. 
Such  are  the  parables  and  such  the  epigrams  by 
which  this  local  provincialism  is  rebuked.  And  what 
is  offered  on  the  other  side?  The  grandeur  of  a 
true-born  son  of  God.  The  light  and  life  and  glory 
and  victory  which  will  certainly  come  when  a  child 
of  God  partakes  of  the  divine  nature,  as  we  all  may, 
enters  into  the  life  of  God,  is  inspired  by  the  Holy 
Spirit,  and  works  the  miracles,  therefore,  which 
the  Holy  Spirit  may  command.  There  is  one  and 
another  curious  phrase,  to  show  how  broadly  Jesus 
interprets  this  title  of  "  son,"  and  how  much    he 


WHAT  THINK   YE   OF   CHRIST?  2 1 

means  by  the  central  word  "  father."  In  another 
interview  in  this  same  temple,  he  quotes  from  the 
82d  Psalm  the  words  in  which  those  are  called 
gods  to  whom  the  word  of  God  came,  —  "  Is  it  not 
written  in  your  law,  I  said,  ye  are  gods?"  And 
then  he  puts  squarely  the  question,  which  neither 
Father  Ignatius  nor  any  of  his  school  ever  con- 
descends to  answer,  "  If  he  called  them  gods  unto 
whom  the  word  of  God  came  (and  the  Scripture 
cannot  be  broken),  say  ye  of  him  whom  the  Father 
sanctified  and  sent  into  the  world,  Thou  blasphemest. 
because  I  said  I  am  the  son  of  God?  "  If  God  is 
our  father,  we  are  all  God's  sons  or  God's  daugh- 
ters. And  then,  as  the  centre  of  expostulation 
and  entreaty,  he  begs  us  to  recognize  the  greatness 
of  this  calling,  to  be  true  to  the  spirit  which  inspires 
us,  and  as  princes  of  the  blood  royal  to  live  in  the 
Father's  house,  and  to  go  about  the  Father's  busi- 
ness. Not  unwilling  to  take  the  fond  phrases,  in 
which,  with  more  or  less  distinctness,  old  prophets 
have  spoken  of  the  Messiah,  he  is  willing  to  accept 
such  terms  as  "  First-born,"  "  First-begotten," 
"  Best  beloved ;"  but  always  there  is  the  determina- 
tion that  we  shall  understand  that  where  there  is  a 
first-born  son,  there  are  other  children,  and  that  he 
opens  for  us  the  inheritance  which  he  begs  us  all 
to  claim. 

What  think  ye  of  the  Christ,  then  ?  The  gospel 
answer  to  this  question  is,  that  the  Christ  is  the 
Son  of  God. 


22  WHAT  THINK   YE   OF   CHRTST? 

Thou  art  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  the  living  God, 
is  indeed  the  motto  for  the  corner-stone  of  the 
church,  as  he  said  it  was. 

And  any  effort  to  make  it  out  that  more  was 
concealed  behind  this  phrase  than  it  expresses,  is 
an  effort  which  re-acts  against  him  who  makes  it. 
The  Church  herself  stopped  dead  in  her  amazing 
advance  of  the  early  centuries.  She  failed  in  her 
real  duty,  and  sunk  back  into  an  "  establishment" 
just  so  soon  as  she  began  to  worship  him.  Then 
it  was  that  she  turned  away  from  the  work  which 
he  assigned  to  her,  which  was  to  bring  in  the  King- 
dom of  God. 

"  I  am  your  master,"  he  said.  Yes.  "  You  are 
to  follow  me,  and  I  am  your  leader."  Yes.  "  But 
you  are  to  seek  the  Spirit  of  God  to  enliven  you 
and  give  you  strength.  And,  in  fact,  I  go  away 
that  that  Spirit  may  more  surely  possess  you." 
Nay,  his  word  is  so  strong  as  this,  "  If  I  do  not  go 
away,  the  Comforter  will  not  come  to  you." 

So  careful  is  he  to  efface  himself  from  the  wor- 
ship of  the  church.  He  brings  the  wandering 
child  to  the  Father's  feet,  and  then  goes  away,  that 
he  may  leave  him  there. 

I.  There  are  thirty  different  texts  in  which  the 
Saviour  more  or  less  distinctly  defines  Christian 
discipleship.  Such  is  the  statement  to  Nico- 
demus,  the  earliest  of  them :  "  Except  a  m.an  be 
born  again  he  cannot  see  the  Kingdom  of  God." 
I  need  not  read  them.      It  will  be  a  better  exercise 


WHAT   THINK   YE    OF   CHRIST?  23 

for  you  to  copy  them  from  yotir  own  Bibles 
yourselves.  In  those  thirty  texts  he  speaks  three 
times  of  their  believing  on  him.  In  all  of  them 
he  speaks  as  to  those  who  love  him  enough  to  be- 
lieve him  and  to  follow  him.  But  in  not  one  of 
them  does  he  lay  the  least  stress  on  any  intellec- 
tual process.  In  not  one  of  them  does  he  open 
the  question  as  to  what  they  think  of  him,  or  what 
honor  they  shall  pay  to  him.  He  offered  himself 
as  our  Master,  and  left  us  his  unfinished  work. 
He  says  to  us,  "  If  you  obey  me,  you  will  follow 
me."  He  proved  his  affection  in  his  death.  And 
he  says,  "  If  you  believe  in  me,  you  will  love 
me."  He  means  that  we  shall  unite  in  such  love, 
and  he  says :  "  If  you  love  me,  you  will  love  each 
other."  In  all  these  statements  he  speaks  as  one 
who  would  bring  in  the  Kingdom  of  the  Living 
God.  Of  himself  he  says  almost  nothing.  But 
when  he  does  speak,  it  is  to  say  that  he  represents 
that  Living  God  as  his  anointed  and  well-beloved 
Son. 

II.  When  you  come,  in  the  Testament,  to  the 
apostles'  definition  of  Christianity  you  find  the 
same  statement.  They  are  building  on  the  foun- 
dation. The  foundation  is :  "  Thou  art  the 
Christ,  the  Son  of  the  living  God."  They  are 
never  tempted,  right  hand  or  left  hand,  to  make 
any  other  statement.  They  baptize  into  the  name 
of  Jesus  the  Christ,  Jesus  the  Saviour.  They 
make  no  pretence  that  this  Jesus  is  very  God  of 


24  WHAT   THINK   YE   OF   CHRIST? 

very  God.  Their  one  central  thought  is  the  build- 
ing up  a  church  of  God's  children;  of  the  sons  of 
God  and  of  his  daughters. 

To  these  sons  and  daughters  they  say,  "  Here  is 
God,  God  is  near:  enter  his  Kingdom."  To  bind 
them  together,  they  baptize  them  in  the  name  of 
Jesus  Christ,  the  first  begotten  of  their  company, 
the  best  beloved  Son  of  God,  who  has  called  them 
from  darkness  into  light.  And  they  call  upon 
each  and  all  to  receive,  as  he  received,  the  present 
Spirit  of  God,  to  live  in  that  Spirit,  to  walk  in  that 
Spirit,  to  go  and  to  come  as  themselves,  God's 
children.  "  Walk  worthy  of  the  calling  with 
which  ye  are  called,"  as  that  Son  of  God  walked, 
who  died  that  you  might  come  into  your  Father's 
home,  and  he  into  yours. 

III.  What  the  church  thought  of  Christ,  in  the 
first  centuries  after  the  apostles,  has  appeared  very 
distinctly  in  late  years,  in  the  discovery  of  the 
early  Catechism,  to  which  the  name  of  the  twelve 
apostles  was  given.  It  was  the  Catechism  taught 
to  new  converts  before  they  received  the  supper. 
Its  language  at  the  supper,  for  instance,  shows 
that  that  was  then  a  simple  service  of  thanks- 
giving: — 

"  Concerning  the  Eucharist,  thus  give  thanks ; 
first  concerning  the  cup :  We  thank  thee,  our 
Father,  for  the  holy  wine  of  David  thy  servant, 
which  thou  hast  made  known  to  us  through  Jesus 
thy  servant;   to  thee  be  the  glory  forever.     And 


WHAT  THINK   YE   OF   CHRIST? 


25 


concerning  the  broken  bread :  We  thank  thee,  our 
Father,  for  the  life  and  knowledge  which  thou  hast 
made  known  to  us  through  Jesus  thy  servant ;  to 
thee  be  the  glory  forever."  All  worship,  all  prayers, 
are  addressed  to  the  Father.  Jesus  is  his  servant, 
whom  he  has  sent  as  a  teacher.  He  is  as  he  was 
in  Peter's  word,  "  The  son  of  the  living  God."  It 
is  on  this  rock  that  the  church  of  that  day  knew 
that  it  was  standing. 

And  so  long  as  they  sought  what  he  sought,  — 
to  bring  in  the  Kingdom  of  God,  —  the  church 
triumphed,  with  a  sway  which  no  philosophy 
understood,  and  which  no  martyrdom  set  back- 
ward. But  then,  alas  !  that  came  which  he  foresaw. 
Ah  !  it  is  so  much  easier  to  worship  him  than  to 
follow  him.  "  Many  will  say  '  Lord,  Lord,'  who 
do  not  the  things  that  I  say."  While  the  church 
was  willing  to  do  the  things  he  said,  though  it  was 
the  communion  of  the  poor  and  the  ignorant,  of 
the  weak  and  foolish,  it  triumphed.  In  those 
days  it  had  no  name  for  him  other  than  his  own, 
none  but  the  anointed  of  God,  brother  of  our 
brotherhood,  first  heir  of  inheritance.  Son  of  God, 
well  beloved,  first-born.  Master,  and  Lord.  But  it 
was  not  so  easy  to  do  as  one  would  be  done  by ;  it 
was  not  so  easy  to  feed  the  poor  and  to  welcome 
the  leper ;  it  was  not  so  easy  to  live  in  the  brother- 
hood of  humanity.  It  was  a  great  deal  easier  to 
fall  down  and  worship  him,  as  he  had  never  asked 
them  to  do ;  vastly  easier  to  call  him  very  God  of 


26  WHAT  THINK   YE   OF   CHRIST? 

very  God,  as  he  never  said  he  was  ;  easier  to  say 
he  made  the  worlds,  as  he  did  not.  Weary  of  that 
harder  service,  weary  of  the  way  of  thorns,  the 
church  made  its  compact  with  the  world.  And 
from  that  day  to  this  day,  its  formal  creeds  have 
thrown  upon  him  the  burden  of  the  sins  of  man- 
kind, and  have  given  to  him  the  homage  which  he 
gave  to  his  Father. 

IV.  Yet  he  was  never  left  without  a  witness. 
Central  in  all  testimonies  were  the  four  Gospels, 
which  would  not  change.  Steadily  they  say  that 
he  is  the  Anointed  —  the  Son  of  the  living  God. 
There  was  the  confessed  refusal  of  all  Palestine, 
where  he  lived  and  died,  to  give  him  any  other 
name,  whether  men  were  his  followers  or  no. 
There  were  such  simple  Christians  as  those  in 
the  valleys  of  the  Alps,  who  would  never  say  that 
the  Son  was  the  Father,  and  did  not  know  what 
was  meant  when  men  said  it. 

More  and  more,  as  Galileo's  tube  opened  the 
sky,  as  this  world  took  its  proper  little  place  in 
the  universe,  as  it  showed  itself,  a  little  speck  of 
dust  floating  in  space,  by  the  same  law  which 
ruled  planets,  suns,  and  constellations ;  more  and 
more  did  men  ask  themselves  what  the  creed  of 
the  church  meant  when  it  said  that  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  made  all  the  worlds ;  or  what  it  meant 
when  it  said  that  the  very  God  of  the  universe 
even,  left  the  universe  to  stand  on  the  deck  of  a 
fishing-boat  at  Capernaum.     More  and  more  the 


WHAT  THINK   YE   OF   CHRIST?  2/ 

devout  thought  of  the  world  went  back  to  the 
simple  statement  of  the  four  Gospels,  and  recog- 
nized and  found  its  Saviour,  as  never  before, 
when  it  accepted  him  again  as  the  well-beloved 
Son  of  the  Living  God,  commissioned  and  anointed 
to  bring  in  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

This  is  the  statement  of  his  work  and  his  posi- 
tion which  will  stand,  because  it  is  his  own  state- 
ment. For  us,  our  place  is  gratitude  and  loyalty. 
"What  is  that  to  thee?  "he  said  to  Peter  once, 
when  Peter  stepped  too  far  in  a  question,  —  "  what 
is  that  to  thee?     Follow  thou  me." 

And  that  is  what  he  would  say  to  us  if  we 
could  put  to  him  some  of  our  speculative  ques- 
tions, —  these  conundrums  which  the  theologians 
hand  about  so  glibly, —  "What  is  that  to  thee? 
Follow  thou  me."  Whoever  will  take  the  Saviour 
of  men,  in  his  work  of  saving  them  from  their 
sins,  whoever  will  try  the  great  experiment  of 
prayer,  and  the  other  experiment  of  sacrifice,  as 
this  Leader  of  men  bids  him  try  one  and  the 
other,  comes  to  the  certainty  that  here  is  a  Leader 
who  knows  how  to  lead,  who  knows  what  he  is 
talking  about,  and  who  shows  the  way.  Whoever 
follows,  though  with  trembling  foot  and  fickle 
faith,  follows  each  day  more  hopefully  and 
strongly,  and  knows  that  this  is  no  finite  guess  that 
he  is  working  on  ;  he  knows  that  he  has  God's  law 
for  the  affairs  of  men ;  this  time  he  is  sure  of  his 
Leader.     This  Leader  is  from  God,  commissioned 


28  WHAT  THINK   YE   OF   CHRIST? 

by  him,  inspired  by  him,  and  sustained  by  him. 
He  who  follows  that  Leader,  comes  to  believe  that 
Leader,  and  to  live  in  his  Life.  As  the  Saviour 
prays,  he  prays.  As  the  Saviour  trusts,  he  trusts. 
As  the  Saviour  listens,  he  listens.  He  comes  to 
know  that  the  living  God,  the  Hving  Power  of  the 
Universe,  loves  and  strengthens  every  child  of 
earth.  They  are  his  children,  partakers  of  his 
nature,  and  alive  with  his  life.  Such  a  child  of 
God,  who  has  followed  to  such  purpose  the  Son 
of  God  well-beloved,  dares  the  great  experiment 
of  the  Holy  Spirit.  He  lives  in  God,  he  moves  in 
God,  in  God  he  has  his  being.  He  plunges  into 
life,  knowing  that  the  living  God  will  sustain  him 
and  carry  him  through.  He  believes  the  Master's 
words,  "  Lo,  I  am  not  alone,  for  my  Father  is 
with   me." 

"  God  does  not  hate  me.  He  loves  me."  This 
is  the  cry  of  such  a  disciple.  "  God  does  not 
punish  me.  He  forgives  me.  God  does  not  forget 
me  as  he  goes  about  in  his  universe.  He  is  here  — 
to-day  —  this  minute.  And  I — I  am  not  in  the 
darkness.  I  am  in  his  Light.  I  am  not  alone. 
I  am  with  him.  I  am  nat  weak.  I  am  in  his 
arms.  For  I  am  his  child  —  born  of  him — as  I 
shall  return  to  him.  My  life  is  not  of  to-day,  not 
of  to-morrow,  but  is  forever;  it  is  as  the  life  of 
God."  This  is  the  joy  of  life  —  to  come  to  this 
certainty.  And  the  disciple  who  is  so  glad,  the 
disciple  who  is  so  certain,  cannot  find   hymn  or 


WHAT  THINK   YE   OF   CHRIST?  29 

psalm  joyous  enough  to  express  his  exultation ; 
he  cannot  frame  the  word  which  expresses  his 
gratitude.  What  can  he  do  but  follow  loyally, 
lovingly,  heartily,  the  Leader  who  has  led  him, 
the  Teacher  who  has  taught  him,  the  Saviour  who 
has  saved  him,  the  Brother  who  has  blessed  him. 
He  finds  the  way  of  life.  He  looks,  and  lo !  an 
Open  Door.  Thou  art  indeed  the  Christ,  the  Son 
of  the  living  God. 


FIVE    QUESTIONS. 


"  Our  Father  who  art  in  heaven,  hallowed  be  thy  name." 

Matt.  vi.  9. 

I  HAVE  received  a  courteous  letter  from  the 
editor  of  the  "  Boston  Investigator."  This  is  a 
newspaper  which  has  existed  in  Boston,  dedicated 
to  what  used  to  be  called  infidelity,  since  1831, 
and  is  read,  as  it  says  itself,  by  thousands  of  men 
and  women  who  are  in  the  dark  about  God,  and 
are  willing  to  be  enlightened.  The  letter  which  I 
have  received  is  an  "  open  letter  to  the  clergymen 
of  Boston."  I  will  not  read  it  at  length  now,  but 
I  will  read  the  five  questions  which  it  puts  to  all 
of  us, 

1.  What  do  you  mean  by  the  word  "  God"? 

2.  How  do  you  know  that  there  is  a  God? 

3.  Where  is  the  dwelling-place  of  God,  or 
where  is  heaven? 

4.  What  makes  the  Bible  the  word  of  God  ? 

5.  Did  God  write  the  Bible,  or  dictate  it,  or 
make  it  divine  after  it  was  written? 

Nothing  can  be  more  interesting  than  the  fact 
that  such  a  letter,  intelligently  drawn  and  courte- 
ously written,  is  addressed,  in  good  faith,  to  the 


32  FIVE   QUESTIONS. 

preachers  of  the  Christian  religion  in  Boston.  It 
is  simply  my  duty,  as  it  is  a  pleasure,  to  reply  to 
it;  and  there  are  many  reasons  why  I  read  the 
reply  here  before  sending  it,  as  I  shall  do,  to  Mr. 
Washburn. 

It  would  be  rather  painful  to  think  that  one  had 
preached  what  he  thought  true  in  Boston  for 
thirty-five  years,  and  that  any  person  who  cared 
about  him  was  ignorant  of  his  views  on  these  five 
subjects.  But  I  can  well  understand  that,  as  there 
are  many  different  answers  possible  to  each  of 
these  five  questions,  that  vague  person  whom  we 
call  "  the  average  reader "  might  fail  to  see  how 
those  answers  connect  with  each  other.  That  is  to 
say,  it  may  well  be  that  the  whole  system  of  relig- 
ious belief  often  confuses  the  inquirer  who  knows 
what  is  one  or  another  detail. 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  that  a  person  who 
calls  himself  an  infidel  puts  his  questions  in  about 
the  same  way  in  which  they  would  be  put  in  a 
theological  school  by  the  most  conservative  of 
professors.  This  seems  to  show  that  both  are 
making  the  same  inquiry,  in  much  the  same 
spirit  and  with  much  the  same  purpose. 

I.  The  first  question,  then,  is,  "What  do  you 
mean  by  '  God  '  ?  "  My  answer  is  that  that  word  is 
the  word  which  has,  on  the  whole,  been  agreed 
upon  by  the  persons  who  speak  the  English  lan- 
guage, to  denote  the  infinite  Power  which  appears 
in  all  nature.     As   to  the  existence  of  this  Power 


FIVE   QUESTIONS.  33 

there  is  no  question.  Some  Power  makes  what  we 
call  storms  sweep  across  the  continent,  so  that 
snow  is  falhng  from  the  atmosphere  while  I  write 
these  words.  Some  Power  has  set  the  world  and 
sun  in  such  order  that  on  this  world  it  is  daylight 
for  a  part  of  the  time  and  darkness  for  another 
part  of  the  time.  To  this  Power,  the  people 
who  use  the  English  language  have,  on  the  whole, 
assigned  the  name  "  God  ;  "  and  I  use  that  word  be- 
cause it  is  the  English  word  for  this  Power.  Jesus 
Christ,  whom  I  call  the  Saviour  of  men,  preferred 
to  use  the  word  "  Father  "  when  he  spoke  of  this 
Power.  This  was  because  he  definitely  and  dis- 
tinctly believed  that  men  and  women  are  of  the 
same  nature  with  this  Power.  He  definitely  and 
distinctly  believed,  as  I  believe,  that  this  Power  is 
aware  of  what  men  and  women  do,  and  assists 
them  in  doing  it.  Just  as  any  man  of  science 
would  say  that  gravitation  or  electricity  results 
from  this  Power,  Jesus  Christ  said  that  love, 
memory,  imagination,  and  any  other  human 
attribute  come  from  the  Power  who  rules  the 
universe. 

II.  The  second  question  is,  "  How  do  you  know 
that  there  is  a  God?  "  After  my  first  answer,  Mr. 
Washburn  would  put  this  question  thus :  "  How 
do  you  know  that  this  Power  is  conscious  of  your 
existence?  "  For  Mr.  Washburn  and  I  would  agree 
that  there  is  such  a  Power  in  the  universe.  The 
general  answer  which  will  be  made  to  Mr.  Wash- 


34  FIVE   QUESTIONS. 

burn  is  that  all  men  and  women  are  conscious  of 
the  existence  of  God,  unless  they  have  been  early- 
prejudiced.  It  will  be  said  to  him  that  all  nations 
in  all  times  have  believed  in  the  existence  of 
a  conscious  Power  above  them,  and  that  this 
general  accord  of  the  common  sense  of  men  is  a 
strong  reason  for  belief  that  such  a  Power  exists. 
At  all  events,  it  will  be  said,  a  feeling  naturally 
impressed  in  all  human  hearts  must  be  taken  as 
fundamental  in  any  human  discussions.  It  seems 
to  me  that  this  statement  is  worth  a  great  deal, 
and  I  should  find  it  very  hard  to  parry  it  if  it 
were  made  against  me  in  argument.  But  I  know 
perfectly  well  that  Mr.  Washburn  will  say  in  reply 
what  he  has  a  right  to  say,  —  that  he  has  no  such 
sentiment.  He  will  say  that  he  never  had  any 
such  sentiment,  and  that  therefore  when  I  appeal 
to  the  consciousness  of  the  human  race,  I  make 
an  appeal  which  he  is  not  bound  to  respect.  I 
think,  as  a  matter  of  logic,  he  has  a  right  to  make 
this  reply. 

For  myself,  however,  it  is  a  matter  of  the  greatest 
interest  to  observe  that  here  live,  upon  this  world, 
millions  and  millions  and  millions  of  men,  beasts, 
birds,  fishes,  and  insects  who  are  conscious  of 
their  own  existence  and  aware  of  the  existence  of 
others.  Even  a  fly  knows  that  he  is  alive,  and 
knows  that  other  flies  are  alive  around  him. 
Observing  this,  there  is  to  me  something  prepos- 
terous  beyond    language   in  the  assumption  that 


FIVE   QUESTIONS.  35 

every  other  world  goes  about  its  own  business 
without  such  life — such  conscious  life;  that 
this  element  which  we  call  life,  this  element  of 
consciousness,  is  unknown  outside  this  world  — 
in  all  that  universe.  To  suppose  that  on  this 
little  speck  there  are  some  millions  of  beings, 
loving,  hating,  fearing,  resolving,  worshipping, 
acting,  and  creating  from  conscious  impulse,  and 
then  to  suppose  that  everywhere  outside  of  this 
speck  there  is  no  loving,  no  hating,  no  fearing, 
no  hoping,  no  worshipping,  and  no  creating,  is  to 
me  so  sublimely  absurd  that  I  find  it  difficult  to 
conceive  that  other  people  hold  that  impression. 
To  go  a  little  farther,  I  find  that  I,  with  five  senses, 
and  five  senses  only,  by  which  to  communicate 
with  outside  nature,  am  able  to  form  a  definite 
and  well-conceived  opinion  regarding  many  things 
which  are  passing  in  stars  whose  distance  from  me 
is  almost  beyond  statement.  I  find  myself  able  to 
go  back  into  the  past  through  ages  indefinite, 
even  though  you  say  I  may  not  go  forward  into 
the  future ;  I  find  that  a  little  five-sensed  man  like 
me  is  capable  of  this  almost  infinite  range  in  his 
life.  As  this  is  so,  I  find  it  absolutely  impossible 
to  think  that  the  Power  who  moves  worlds,  makes 
suns  shine  or  not  shine,  and  creates  me  and  cre- 
ates everything  around  me,  is  doing  this  without 
thought,  without  hope,  without  life  —  that  that 
Power  is  not  He,  but  is  It — that  that  Power  is 
an  unconscious  power. 


36  FIVE   QUESTIONS. 

If  this  Power  knows  what  he  is  about,  if  he  is 
conscious  of  his  work,  he  knows  more  or  less 
about  me,  about  what  I  am  about,  and  about  what 
my  work  is. 

I  do  not  suppose  that  the  average  savage  of 
early  days  would  have  made  this  statement  in 
exactly  this  form ;  but  I  do  suppose  that,  from 
the  beginning,  a  certain  sympathy  between  the 
processes  of  nature,  as  we  call  them,  and  the  pro- 
cesses of  a  man's  life  has  led  the  average  savage 
or  the  average  sage  to  the  feeling  that  there  is 
possible  conversation  or  communion  between  the 
Infinite  Being  and  the  finite  being.  That  is, 
prayer  or  communion  between  the  two  comes 
from  the  certainty  that  nature,  or  God,  is  inter- 
ested in  man.  If  God  knows  about  me  and  cares 
for  me,  —  if  I  am  of  his  nature,  —  I  know  some- 
thing about  him  and  certainly  I  care  for  him. 

Such  mutual  consciousness  may  of  course  be  ex- 
pressed in  a  thousand  ways.  But  there  are,  how- 
ever, simple  experiments  which  the  world  has  been 
trying  for  tens  of  thousands  of  years,  —  probably 
for  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years, — which  have 
brought  men  to  the  conviction  of  to-day.  If  God 
is  conscious  of  my  existence,  if  I  have,  to  say  the 
least,  a  suspicion  that  he  exists,  I  can  try  the  ex- 
periment. Even  if  I  were  as  badly  off  as  a  fishing- 
vess-el  in  a  fog,  and  knew  not  where  I  was,  I  could 
blow  the  steam-whistle  or  sound  the  horn  hour 
after  hour  of  the  tedious  night.     And  if,  of  a  sud- 


FIVE   QUESTIONS.  ^7 

den,  I  heard  whistle  or  horn  in  reply,  I  should 
know  that  I  was  not  alone,  but  that  there  was 
some  other  intelligence  at  hand.  It  is  thus  in  the 
power  of  any  child  of  God  to  try  the  great  ex- 
periment. He  can  come  to  God  in  prayer.  Day  in 
and  out,  month  in  and  out,  year  in  and  out,  he  can 
tell  him  everything  —  one's  hopes  and  fears,  one's 
joys  and  sorrows.  The  men  who  have  tried  this 
great  experiment  in  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
years  are,  on  the  whole,  agreed  that  these  prayers 
have  been  answered.  They  are,  on  the  whole, 
sure  that  from  the  infinite  Power  which  rules  all 
life  new  power  has  come  to  them  in  proportion  as 
they  have  entered  into  his  life,  his  purpose,  and  his 
affair.  If  they  have  lived  as  sons  of  God,  partak- 
ers of  his  nature,  they  have  more  and  more  be- 
lieved that  he  is  their  Father,  and  they  have  had 
more  and  more  of  the  infinite  strength  which  con- 
trols the  world.  On  the  whole,  taking  a  long 
sweep  of  the  circle  for  the  calculation,  those  chil- 
dren of  God  who  have  tried  to  walk  with  God,  to 
carry  out  such  laws  as  they  have  found  him  give, 
and  to  give  themselves  to  such  purposes  as  they 
believe  to  be  his  purposes,  have  been  the  men  and 
women  who  have  succeeded  in  this  world.  And 
they  are  the  very  men  and  women  who  have  begged 
other  persons  to  enter  into  the  same  communion 
with  him. 

Of  such   prayer  the  simplest  form  and  the  best 
for  a  doubtful  beginner,  if  you  please,  is  that  old 


$8  FIVE   QUESTIONS. 

form,  often  repeated,  "  O  God,  if  there  be  a  God, 
help  my  soul,  if  I  have  a  soul !  "  This  is  quoted 
sometimes  as  if  it  were  matter  for  ridicule.  It 
seems  to  me  a  yearning  appeal  of  a  heart  which  has 
been  chilled,  of  a  soul  whose  senses  have  been 
stunned,  of  a  child  of  God  who,  by  some  fatal  or 
hellish  ingenuity,  has  been  shut  up  in  a  prison  where 
he  could  not  see  the  heavens  nor  enjoy  the  life  of 
the  earth.  Beginning  with  a  prayer  as  simple,  — 
"  Lord,  I  believe  ;  help  thou  mine  unbehef,"  —  an 
unprejudiced  child  of  God,  with  every  sense  open 
for  an  answer,  eager  to  live  life  larger  and  larger, 
comes  out  —  perhaps  to-day,  perhaps  to-morrow, 
perhaps  next  year,  perhaps  after  some  shock  or 
crisis  of  being —  into  infinite  life,  is  no  longer 
hemmed  in  in  the  petty  work  of  five  human  senses, 
but  partakes  of  the  divine  nature  and  goes  about 
his  God's  infinite  concerns. 

If,  as  he  lives,  he  is  born  as  a  little  child  every 
day,  the  prayer  becomes  absolute  intimacy.  He 
nestles  in  this  Father's  arms  as  a  glad  child  in  her 
mother's.  "  Father  dear,  now  they  have  all  gone, 
now  we  are  alone,  tell  me  something.  What  is 
there  to-day?  What  are  you  doing.  Father  dear? 
What  can  I  do  —  can  I  not  help  somewhere  ?  Oh, 
do  let  me  tell  you,  dear  Father,  what  a  time  I  have 
had.  I  was  all  broken  to  pieces,  I  was  so  angry. 
And  then  just  in  time  I  remembered.  I  remem- 
bered how  good  you  are,  and  I  would  not  give 
way.     But    please    show    me    how  I  am  to    pull 


FIVE   QUESTIONS.  39 

through."  Men  come  into  the  real  presence,  and 
they  are  sure  that  the  central  Love  of  the  universe 
sustains  them.  Here,  then,  is  my  answer  to  the 
second  question. 

III.  And  in  these  statements  is  the  answer  to  the 
next  question  of  our  series:  "Where  is  heaven?" 
Heaven  is  the  universe  of  space.  Heaven  is  here, 
as  it  is  in  the  planet  Jupiter,  or  in  the  worlds  which 
surround  the  stars  of  the  Pleiades.  Wherever  is  the 
universal  God  who  rules  all  nature,  wherever  is  the 
Power  who  works  for  righteousness,  there  is  heaven. 
When  I  accept  that  glad  suggestion  or  impression 
that  I  am  of  that  life,  that  I  share  that  power,  that 
I  partake  of  that  divine  nature,  I  am  in  heaven  as 
God  is  in  heaven.  I  have  not  to  take  the  wings  of 
the  eagle,  I  have  not  to  go  to  the  uttermost  parts 
of  any  unfathomed  ocean.  God  is  with  me,  I  am 
with  him.  I  live  and  move  and  have  my  being 
in  my  God ;  and  so  I  am  in  heaven.  Some  poet, 
not  known  to  me,  speaks  of 

"That   perfect   presence  of  his  face 
Which  we,  for  lack  of  words,  call  heaven." 

It  is  easy  to  see  that,  in  the  earlier  language 
of  barbarous  tribes,  it  was  supposed  that  certain 
spots  in  space  were  more  sacred  than  other  spots. 
But  it  belongs  to  the  life  more  abundant,  of  man 
who  is  infinite  in  his  aspirations  and  infinite  in  his 
powers,  to  discover  that  there  is  no  such  limita- 
tion.    I  shall  not  put  it  better  than  it  is  put  by 


40  FIVE   QUESTIONS. 

one  of  these  old  Hebrew  prophets :  "  If  I  ascend 
to  the  skies  thou  art  there ;  if  I  descend  into  the 
depths  thou  art  there ;  if  I  take  the  wings  of 
the  morning  and  dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts  of 
the  universe,  even  there  shall  thy  hand  lead  me, 
and  thy  right  hand  shall  hold  me." 

In  a  word,  every  difficulty  which  has  been  sug- 
gested in  these  questions,  thus  far,  seems  to  be  a 
difficulty  belonging  to  the  use  of  crippled  lan- 
guage, to  the  mechanical  use  of  certain  words  made 
from  things.  So  soon  as  man,  the  child  of  God, 
takes  into  his  heart  the  reality  that  he  is  also  in- 
finite, and  is  of  the  nature  of  the  Power  which 
makes  for  righteousness,  all  these  separate  ques- 
tions go  back  to  the  etymologists  and  to  the 
dictionaries. 

IV.,  V.  The  next  questions  "  What  is  the  Bible  ?  " 
and  "Did  God  write  the  Bible?"  are  simpler  ques- 
tions, merely  of  human  history.  It  happened  or  it 
was  ordered,  under  this  present  law  of  God,  that 
the  Jewish  nation,  at  its  best  periods,  made  the  wor- 
ship of  an  unseen  God  a  central  matter,  as  other 
nations  of  their  time  did  not.  So  when  they  wrote 
history  or  poetry  it  was  history  or  poetry  devout 
in  its  statement  and  expression.  It  looked  toward 
God.  It  has  so  happened,  or  has  been  so  ordered, 
that  a  few  of  the  histories  and  poems  thus  written 
struggled  through,  as  the  naturalists  say,  by  the 
survival  of  the  fittest,  where  other  literature  has 
gone    to    ruin.     It   became,  therefore,  the  centre 


FIVE   QUESTIONS.  4I 

around  which  formed  itself  the  religious  literature 
of  the  Western  World.  This  is  just  as  other  books 
of  high  antiquity  have  become  the  centre  of  the 
religious  expression  of  the  Eastern  World. 

The  early  Christians,  who  had  received  from 
Jesus  Christ  new  life  and  new  lessons  of  life,  took 
and  read  in  their  assemblies  these  religious  books 
of  the  Hebrew  nation  to  which  he  belonged.  But 
they  wanted  much  more  —  to  know  what  he  said, 
and  what  they  said  who  knew  him  best.  They 
therefore  collected  all  the  written  remains  which 
they  could  find,  of  those  men  who  had  proclaimed 
his  glad  tidings.  Again,  the  law  of  selection  pre- 
served some,  while  others,  of  course,  have  disap- 
peared. A  council  of  Christian  teachers,  held  in 
the  beginning  of  the  fourth  century,  made  the 
selection  which  we  now  call  the  New  Testa- 
ment, in  the  attempt  to  say  what  manuscripts  then 
existing  were  the  words  of  Christ's  companions. 

In  neither  of  these  books — the  Old  Testament  or 
the  New  Testament — is  any  claim  made  that  they 
are  written  by  God,  or  that  they  are  directed  by 
him  except  as  he  directs  all  life.  Nor  is  the  claim 
made  in  them  that  his  Word  cannot  be  found  else- 
where. They  do  not  make  any  such  claim,  and 
if  they  did  it  is  clear  enough  that  such  a  claim  of 
itself  would  not  add  to  the  authority.  All  the 
more,  however,  the  Bible,  as  it  stands,  is  the 
best  record  of  many  of  the  few  greatest  crises  of 
history.     It  contains   the  word    of  Him  who  has 


42  FIVE   QUESTIONS. 

proved  to  be  the  Leader  of  Life,  the  Life-giver,  and 
the  Saviour.  It  will  therefore  hold  the  place  which 
it  has  won.  For  that  thing  which  the  world  craves 
as  its  needs  is  Life.  It  craves  the  closest  intimacy 
it  can  gain  with  the  God  who  makes  for  righteous- 
ness. So  it  clings  to  the  Bible,  which  tells  the 
steps  and  records  the  words  of  those  who  have 
known  this  absolute  intimacy. 

It  is  pathetic  enough  that  such  questions  can  be 
asked,  with  such  serious  dignity,  in  the  year  1892. 
It  is  pathetic  indeed  —  it  might  well  make  one 
wretched  —  to  see  that  even  science,  even  what 
is  called  theology,  even  the  organization  of 
churches,  should  have  cramped  and  hardened 
as  they  have  the  forms  of  thought  and  the  words 
in  which  men  speak  of  infinite  truth ;  pathetic, 
indeed,  that  any  man  or  woman  who  might  be  ex- 
ulting in  the  liberty  of  the  infinite  children  of  an 
infinite  God  is  thus  hampered  and  distressed  by 
the  mechanism  of  words,  so  as  to  be  asking  what 
they  mean,  and  hesitating  before  accepting  any 
answer.  Nearly  nineteen  hundred  years  since, 
Jesus  Christ  said,  "  God  is  spirit,  and  they  that 
worship  him  must  worship  him  in  spirit  and  in 
truth."  Surely  he  said,  if  nobody  had  said  it  be- 
fore, that  we  are  the  children  of  God  and  are  like 
him ;  that  he  is  our  Father  and  that  we  partake 
his  nature.  He  said,  if  nobody  said  it  before,  "  Ye 
shall  be  perfect,  even  as  your  Father  in  heaven  is 
perfect."     He  said,  if  nobody  ever  said  it  before, 


FIVE   QUESTIONS.  43 

"I  must  go  about  my  Father's  business."  And  if 
nobody  ever  said  it  before,  he  said  that  if  we  are 
wilHng  to  embark  in  the  great  purpose  of  the  uni- 
verse, with  the  great  Power  who  makes  for  right- 
eousness, the  Power  who  makes  for  righteousness 
strengthens  our  hearts  and  quickens  our  minds 
and  gives  to  us  the  victory.  And  we,  summoned 
by  such  a  call,  quickened  by  such  a  hope,  turn 
around  to  ask  if  this  infinite  Power  of  life  and  love 
is  like  Jupiter  sitting  on  Olympus,  or  like  Neptune 
riding  from  wave  to  wave  on  a  chariot.  We  ask 
whether  certain  pages  of  paper,  with  certain  let- 
ters printed  upon  them  with  ink,  contain  his 
whole  law  of  life  and  love,  and  exclude  the  law 
whispered  in  all  the  winds,  written  on  all  the  fields, 
spoken  by  every  voice  which  the  ear  can  hear, 
and  written  over  the  seas  and  over  the  skies. 

Do  not  such  appeals  as  this  which  I  have  been 
reading  urge  any  of  us  who  may  have  been  luke- 
warm as  to  the  duty  of  a  spiritual  and  liberal 
church  to  send  out  its  glad  tidings  beyond  its  own 
walls  ?  Naturally  enough,  we  hate  the  propaganda 
which  the  Middle  Ages  set  on  foot.  Naturally 
enough,  the  mere  word  missions  has  tainted  itself, 
as  that  word  propaganda  is  associated  with  the 
idea  of  restriction.  But  one  has  only  to  see  how 
a  false  definition  of  the  name  of  God  makes  men 
disbelieve  in  him ;  how  a  false  claim  made  for  the 
Bible  makes  them  throw  the  Bible  to  the  winds ; 
how   a  mechanical    account   of    the    domain   of 


44  FIVE   QUESTIONS. 

heaven  makes  them  refuse  to  enter  into  the  infi- 
nite heaven  of  perfect  love ;  one  has  only  to  see 
the  evidence  of  such  torpor  as  follows  on  the  wor- 
ship of  words,  and  he  consecrates  himself  anew 
to  proclaim  the  gospel  of  realities.  He  swears  he 
will  let  the  world  know  the  glorious  truth,  as  the 
centuries  have  revealed  it.  It  can  be  stated  in 
three  words,  or  it  can  be  expanded  through 
poems  and  histories.  God  is  with  us,  and  we  are 
with  him.  As  he  lives,  life  is  real.  We  can  live 
in  that  life.  His  word  speaks  to  me  here  and  now. 
And  when  I  hear  it  and  when  I  find  him,  I  am  in 
his  kingdom  of  a  present  heaven. 


FATHER,  SON,  AND  HOLY  SPIRIT. 


"  Go  ye  forth  and  make  disciples  of  all  the  nations,  baptizing  them 
into  the  name  of  the  Father  and  of  the  Son  and  of  the  Holy 
Spirit."  Matthew  xxviii.  19. 

This  baptismal  formula  is  repeated  every  day  of 
the  year  in  thousands  of  Christian  churches. 

But  I  am  afraid  that  its  use  is  almost  absolutely 
conventional.  As  one  might  take  the  stars  and 
stripes  of  our  flag  and  say  that  the  flag  is  the 
symbol  of  the  country,  without  asking  why  the 
stars  are  there  or  why  the  stripes  are  there,  so  I 
am  afraid  people  repeat  these  ancient  words  which 
refer  to  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit. 

So  I  am  more  glad  to  use  them,  with  that  addi- 
tion which  is  made  to  them  in  one  of  the  ancient 
doxologies.     Here  the  worshipper  sang : 

"  Glory  to  the  Father,  and  to  the  Son,  and  to  the  Holy  Spirit. 
As  it  was  in  the  beginning." 

As  it  was  in  the  beginning. 

If  you  and  I  could  only  repeat  this  formula,  as 
if  it  were  not  a  formula;  if  you  and  I  could  only 
use  such  words,  all  fresh  and  alive  with  the  life 
with   which    Christ    spoke    them ;     if    they   were 

Edward  E.  Hale. 


46  FATHER,    SON,   AND    HOLY   SPIRIT. 

words  which  had  meaning  in  them,  which  had  liv- 
ing sap  in  them,  which  had  red  blood  in  them, — 
then  we  could  make  them  the  war-cry  of  the 
Church  or  its  paean  of  victory.  But  they  are 
neither  war-cry  nor  paean  if  they  are  only 
repeated  decorously,  as  the  requisition  of  a 
liturgy. 

The  trouble  is,  in  all  our  use  of  the  Gospels, 
that  we  fail  to  see  the  amazing  novelty  to  those 
people  of  the  Saviour's  statement.  So  we  do 
not  comprehend  the  sudden  start,  the  flash  of 
light,  the  determination  to  live,  shall  I  say,  as 
giants  or  as  angels,  in  that  infinite  future  which  is 
spread  before  us.  Indeed,  it  is  almost  impossible 
for  us  to  feel  this ;  but  we  must  try,  we  must  use 
our  imaginations.  Here  is  the  Saviour  in  the 
midst  of  all  sorts  of  people  —  Pharisees,  Sadducees, 
Samaritans,  Phoenicians,  Arabs,  Parthians,  Greeks, 
Romans,  Egyptians,  people  who  have  had  all  sorts 
of  gods,  or  who  have  had  no  God,  one  God,  or 
many  gods.  Some  of  these  gods  were  what  we 
should  call  devils.  All  of  them  represented  force 
and  arbitrary  power.  They  were  kings  or  judges, 
perhaps  they  were  executioners  or  magistrates. 
Everybody  was  afraid  of  them.  To  be  afraid  of 
them  was  a  requisite  of, what  was  called  religion. 
Religion,  indeed,  is  often  defined  among  the  writers 
of  that  time  as  the  terror  of  the  inferior  in  pres- 
ence of  the  superior.  They  went  so  far,  you  re- 
member, as  to  say  squarely  that  "  the  fear  of  the 


FATHER,    SON,   AND   HOLY   SPIRIT.  47 

Lord  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom."  Into  the  midst 
of  the  chattering  of  such  worshippers,  cold  with 
fear  and  almost  dumb  from  terror,  comes  Jesus 
Christ.  And  he  says,  "  Whom  are  you  afraid  of? 
What  are  you  afraid  of?  This  Power  who  main- 
tains this  world,  and  brings  you  and  me  into  being, 
—  he  is  our  Father.  He  loves  us,  and  whenever 
we  know  him  we  love  him.  He  cannot  help  lov- 
ing us,  and  we  cannot  help  loving  him."  When 
he  has  to  say  which  commandment  of  the  old  law 
is  greatest  of  them  all,  it  is  Moses'  instruction, 
which  they  had  never  understood  and  never  ful- 
filled, that  they  should  love  the  Lord  their  God. 
And  the  central  statement  of  all  he  has  to  say 
to  them  is  this  statement,  that  God  loves  them 
and  does  not  hate  them ;  that  God  loves  them  and 
does  not  judge  them;  that  God  commands  them 
only  because  he  loves  them  ;  and  that  because  he 
loves  them  God  watches  over  them  and  cares  for 
them.  Nature  is  really  conscious,  and  is  on  our 
side.  Now  we  are  used  to  all  this.  To  us  the 
words  "  Our  Father  "  and  the  word  "  God  "  have 
become  synonymous,  and  they  mean  the  same 
thing  when  we  use  them,  just  as  the  two  words 
"  Lord  "  and  "  God  "  have  become  synonymous. 
It  was  not  so  then.  It  was  the  marvel  of  marvels. 
Here  is  this  prophet,  —  clearly  he  knows  what  he 
is  talking  about, — and  he  says  nature  is  not  cruel, 
but  she  is  kind.  God  is  not  our  King,  but  our 
Father.     God  watches   us  always,  and  though  we 


48  FATHER,    SON,   AND    HOLY   SPIRIT. 

do  not  know  it,  his  every  act  and  thought  are 
act  and  thought  of  love. 

Of  course,  then,  in  the  watchword  of  the  new 
Church,  in  its  worship,  in  its  baptism,  in  its  proc- 
lamation, this  word  comes  foremost.  We  are 
not  to  baptize  in  the  name  of  Jehovah ;  not 
even,  observe,  in  the  name  of  God.  We  are  to 
show  the  great  reality  which  we  stand  for,  which 
lifts  our  worship  above  and  beyond  that  of  all 
partial  religions.  We  are  to  show  that  it  is  our 
Father  to  whom  we  come. 

Now,  who  are  we  who  worship?  Who  are 
we  who  proclaim?  Who  are  we  who  baptize? 
Who  are  we  who  go  up  and  down  the  world  pro- 
claiming these  glad  tidings?  Are  we  worms  of 
the  dust? 

No! 

Are  we  so  many  shell-fish,  lying  hidden  in  the 
sand,  over  whom  there  sweep  regularly  by  a  fixed 
order  certain  ocean  tides,  which  then  sweep  back 
again  and  leave  us  with  no  wills  of  our  own, — 
only  to  drink  in  this  or  that  from  sunshine  or  from 
air? 

No! 

Are  we  a  set  of  machines,  carefully  constructed, 
with  so  many  bones,  so  many  nerves,  so  many 
muscles  and  sinews,  so  much  blood,  so  much  carti- 
lage, worked  by  a  stationary  battery  called  a  brain, 
which  will  run  fourscore  years  and  then  stop  run- 
ning? 


FATHER,    SON,   AND    HOLY   SPIRIT.  49 

No! 

In  no  accurate  sense  are  we  the  mere  creatures 
of  this  Father.  We  are  much  more.  We  share 
his  nature.  We  partake  his  Hfe.  We  are  his 
sons  and  his  daughters.  His  life  is  our  Hfe. 
His  being  is  our  being.  His  nature  is  our  nature. 
Let  no  man  say  hereafter  that  this  language  is  too 
bold,  that  no  man  born  of  woman  has  shown 
such  love  as  God  shows,  such  tenderness  as 
God  shows,  such  justice  as  he  shows,  which  is 
mercy.  No  man  shall  say  this  who  remembers 
the  son  of  Mary.  The  revelation  which  the  son 
of  Mary  has  made  to  all  his  brothers  and  sisters  of 
mankind  is,  first,  that  the  God  of  Nature  is  their 
Father;  and,  second,  that  in  the  most  real  and 
simple  use  of  words,  they  are  his  sons  as  Jesus 
Christ  is — and  they  are  his  daughters.  So  the 
new  Church,  when  it  states  its  watchword  in  an 
epigram,  states  this  reality  with  the  other.  Abso- 
lute religion  is  the  religion  of  the  Father  and  his 
children.  It  is  the  religion  of  the  Father  and  of 
the  Son.  It  is  the  religion  of  the  Father  and  of 
all  his  sons  and  daughters. 

It  proved  convenient  afterward  for  a  church  of 
priests  to  confine  its  reverence  to  that  first-born 
Son  as  he  is  called.  But  the  Saviour  made  no 
such  restriction.  "  Ye  shall  do  greater  things 
than  I,"  he  said  to  his  own.  He  bade  all  his 
brethren  address  "  Our  Father."  First  and  last, 
his  appeal  to   them  and  to  us  is  to  those  who  can 


50  FATHER,    SON,   AND    HOLY   SPIRIT. 

claim  all  his  privileges  and  hold  his  communion 
with  God  ;   as  when  at  the  end  he  says  : 

"  I  ascend  to  my  Father  and  your  Father,  to  my 
God  and  your  God." 

We  are  not  to  come  to  him  in  our  prayer. 
We  are  to  pray  as  he  prayed,  to  his  Father  and  to 
ours. 

,"  But  these  things  are  too  wonderful  for  me," 
This  is  the  answer  which  the  camel-driver  from 
Parthia  makes  to  Matthew  on  the  Day  of  Pente- 
cost. This  is  what  the  stevedore  at  Corinth  says 
to  Silas  on  the  pier.  This  is  what  the  philoso- 
pher, Seneca,  at  Rome,  says  to  Paul.  "  You  cannot 
make  us  believe,"  they  say,  "  that  this  Power 
who  is  shaping  and  moving  the  world  has  any- 
thing in  common  with  us."  Each  of  them  says, 
"  My  world  is  a  very  small  world.  His  world  is 
infinite."  It  is,  then,  the  first  duty  of  anybody 
who  proclaims  the  eternal  gospel  to  meet  that 
difficulty.  The  Saviour  of  men  does  meet  it. 
All  his  true  apostles  meet  it,  and  you  and  I  must 
meet  it.  It  is  perfectly  true  that,  judged  by  our 
measuring  tapes,  some  things  which  God  does 
seem  very  large,  and  some  things  which  we  do 
seem  very  small.  But  to  him  there  is  nothing 
large  and  nothing  small.  And  we,  as  we  really 
come  to  live  in  him,  to  move  in  him,  and  have 
our  being  in  him,  —  as  we  come  to  know  what 
it  is  that  we  are  his  children,  to  believe  in  the 
Father  and  in  the  Son,  —  we  shall  come  to  know 


FATHER,    SON,   AND   HOLY   SPIRIT.  5  I 

that  to  child  and  Father  there  is  one  Hfe  in 
each  and  in  both.  It  is  one  Spirit  which  in- 
spires the  action  which  we  call  "  large,"  and 
it  is  the  same  Spirit  which  inspires  the  action 
which  we  call  "  small."  Here  is  this  poor  mother 
holding  her  sick  baby  in  her  arms.  Hour  after 
hour,  day  after  day,  she  cares  for  the  child  with 
unvarying  and  unquestioning  love.  The  child 
does  not  thank  her,  cannot  thank  her,  does  not 
want  to  thank  her.  But  the  mother  loves  still, 
loves  without  question,  loves  without  reward. 
What  dictates  such  sacrifice?  It  is  the  same 
Spirit  of  Love  which  sets  the  universe  in  motion. 
It  is  the  Spirit  of  Love  which  clothes  the  world  in 
exquisite  beauty,  so  that  the  poets  may  well  sing 
that  the  angels  delight  to  look  on  it  from  afar. 
It  is  the  same  Spirit  of  Love  which  flavors  the 
fruit  and  colors  the  flower.  That  Spirit  inspires 
that  mother  through  the  dark  watches  of  the 
night  and  through  the  long  hours  of  the  day, 
so  that  that  love  is  a  'perfect  love  and  her  sacri- 
fice is  unfaltering.  You  shall  not  say  it  is  any 
lesser  spirit.  This  display  of  this  Holy  Spirit, 
this  visible  victory  on  that  little  scene,  as  you 
call  it,  between  the  whitewashed  walls  of  an  attic, 
is  as  grand,  as  noble,  as  infinite,  as  is  that  other 
display  when  worlds  are  called  into  visible  being. 
The  one  is  perfect,  and  the  other  is  perfect.  The 
newborn  Church  means  to  assert  this ;  it  means  to 
assert,  not  simply  the  greatness  of  man's  origin. 


52  FATHER,    SON,   AND    HOLY   SPIRIT. 

but  the  dignity  of  his  life.  He  is  engaged  here 
on  affairs  to  which  the  Lord  of  lords  and  King 
of  kings  has  commissioned  him.  For  those  af- 
fairs that  King  of  kings  and  God  of  gods  has 
commissioned  him  and  inspired  him.  It  is  his 
Spirit,  the  Infinite  and  Holy  Spirit  which  rules  that 
universe.  It  is  the  same  Spirit  which  quickens 
the  kiss  which  this  mother  gives  her  child.  Her 
affair,  also,  is  infinite,  and  her  love  is  infinite 
love. 

In  the  beginning  these  early  teachers  meant  to 
express  this  in  their  watchword,  and  that  watch- 
word meant  this  then,  when  they  proclaimed  the 
Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Spirit. 

And  that  is  what  we  mean  now  when  we  give 
glory  to  the  Father,  and  the  Son,  and  the  Holy 
Spirit,  "  as  it  was  in  the  beginning." 

A  very  curious  study  is  that  historical  examina- 
tion which  shows  how  this  simple  rallying-cry 
was  transformed  into  the  mechanical  and  dead 
church  doctrine  called  the  Trinity,  as  held  in  the 
Dark  Ages.  Egypt  had  its  triads  of  gods,  such  as 
Osiris,  Isis,  and  Horus,  which  in  a  fashion  were 
one  God.  And  when  the  modest  Christian  school 
appeared  in  Alexandria,  it  was  not  hard  to  con- 
fuse their  simple  three.  Father,  Child,  and  Spirit, 
into  the  sonorous  phrases  which  describe  three 
adorable  persons  as  all  three  one  God.  Easier 
still,  when  Constantine  folded  Christianity  in  his 
arms  and  almost  stifled    her  in  the  embrace,  for 


FATHER,   SON,   AND   HOLY   SPIRIT.  53 

him  to  grant  any  honors,  any  statement  of  deity, 
to  the  Jesus  Christ  who  was  crucified  three  centu- 
ries before,  if,  by  that  easy  bargain,  he  might  strike 
out  from  the  new-born  religion  those  fatal  state- 
ments that  all  men  were  brethren,  and  that  every 
man  was  son  of  God. 

It  is  no  business  of  ours,  however,  to  go  again 
into  that  fatal  story  of  the  Dark  Ages.  Thanks 
to  the  Christian  Reformation  and  to  reformation 
upon  reformation  which  has  sprung  from  it,  the 
Dark  Ages  are  over,  and  we  live  in  the  light  again, 
or  at  least  in  the  early  dawn.  The  church  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity  died  the  day  Galileo  pointed  his  tele- 
scope at  Jupiter.  For  us  to-day,  then,  one  of  the 
necessities  is  to  give  glory  to  the  divinity  of  man, 
as  they  did  in  the  beginning.  When  we  speak  of 
the  divinity  of  human  nature,  we  do  not  confine  it 
to  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ,  who  came  and  went 
in  Palestine  for  thirty-three  years.  We  are  talking 
of  the  infinite  power  of  all  the  sons  of  God,  and  of 
all  his  daughters.  We  are  talking  of  the  infinite 
and  eternal  life.  We  are  talking  of  the  range  of 
their  duties,  of  the  range  of  their  possibilities,  of 
the  range  of  their  successes,  of  the  range  of  their 
joys.  This  is  it  to  give  glory  to  the  child  of  God 
as  it  was  in  the  beginning. 

And  in  saying  this  I  am  only  speaking  of  one 
detail  of  what  would  be  for  the  higher  and  better 
life  of  mankind,  if  the  Church  of  Christ  to-day 
would  do  what  it  says  in  the  decorous  lip-service 


54  FATHER,    SON,   AND    HOLY   SPIRIT. 

of  a  thousand  different  forms.  It  is  very  true  that 
each  age  likes  to  prepare  its  own  symbols,  each 
likes  to  make  its  own  statements.  Nay,  each  man 
does  this  thing.  Our  dear  friend  Freeman  Clarke 
used  to  say  that  he  had  reduced  the  whole  to  the 
four  words,  "  Love  God,  love  man."  These  make 
an  admirable  watchword,  but  of  course  they  re- 
quire the  statement  of  what  you  mean  by  God,  and 
the  other  statement  of  what  you  mean  by  man. 
They  suppose,  that  is,  that  nineteen  centuries  have 
brought  up  the  world  to  the  knowledge  that  God 
is  our  Father,  and  to  the  knowledge  that  man  is 
the  son  of  God,  is  the  well-beloved  son  of  God ; 
that  man  partakes  his  nature,  enters  into  his  work, 
and  enjoys  his  joy.  For  myself,  I  enjoy  Paul's 
phrase,  when  he  says  that  the  abiding  elements  of 
life  are  faith  and  hope  and  love. 

The  French  Socialists  have  taken  the  phrase 
"  Liberty,  -equality,  fraternity."  The  English 
Chartists,  the  Odd  Fellows,  the  Sons  of  Temper- 
ance, —  every  leading  organization,  —  has  in  like 
wise  taken  modern  words  to  state  its  requisition 
of  the  times,  and  to  try  to  turn  a  fresh  corner  of 
the  diamond,  which  has  not  been  rubbed,  to  do 
the  cutting  of  the  living  hour.  In  every  such 
effort  to  freshen  men's  thought  and  quicken  their 
intelligence,  something,  certainly,  is  gained.  But 
all  of  them  involve  certain  eternal  principles. 
And  I  say  again,  if  the  Church,  when  it  mumbles 
over  these   principles  in  ancient  language,   could 


FATHER,   SON,   AND    HOLY   SPIRIT.  55 

be  electrified  by  some  flash  from  heaven,  or 
quickened  by  some  explosion  of  earthly  dyna- 
mite, or  roused  by  some  voice  of  living  prophet, 
to  do  the  thing  which  she  says  that  she  believes, 
in  that  day  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  would  come. 
Imagine,  if  you  can,  a  world  in  which  men  should 
go  and  come  with  this  sense,  that  nature  is  on 
their  side  and  is  not  against  them ;  a  world  in 
which  a  man  shall  rejoice  in  the  snow-storm,  in 
the  tempest,  in  the  rush  of  the  tide  upon  the 
beach,  as  a  child  rejoices  in  the  opening  of  a 
snowdrop  or  the  perfume  of  a  rose.  Imagine 
a  world  in  which  a  man  who  goes  forth  to  his 
daily  duty  shall  know  that  God  is  with  him,  is 
present  life,  strength,  comfort,  and  joy.  It  is  a 
world  in  which  he  does  not  suppose  that  a  cruel 
God  is  pursuing  him  to  punish  him.  It  is  a  world 
in  which  he  does  not  suppose  that  a  critical  or 
cynical  God  is  weighing  him  on  the  scales,  to 
snap  him  off  the  balance  when  he  is  done  with 
him,  because  he  is  mean  or  imperfect.  It  is  a 
world  in  which  he  knows  that  if  he  will  only  use 
that  which  is  given  him,  if  he  will  only  resolutely 
eat  the  manna  which  falls  to-day,  it  shall  be  to 
him  for  tonic  if  not  for  food,  it  shall  give  him 
strength  if  it  do  not  give  him  joy.  It  is  a  world 
in  which  he  studies  the  forces  of  God,  which  he 
has  not  understood  till  nov/,  and  lo  !  he  finds  that 
lightning  is  not  the  engine  of  God's  wrath,  but 
that    it    is    the    humble    servant  of  his  own  con- 


56  FATHER,    SON,   AND    HOLY   SPIRIT. 

venience  and  pleasure !  He  finds  that  the  tem- 
pest is  not  the  punishment  of  man's  sins,  but  that 
it  is  to  work  the  wonders  of  God's  present  love. 
The  new  life,  the  heart  and  courage  for  daily  duty, 
which  shall  make  men  do  their  work  —  why,  as 
God  does  his  work,  gladly,  heartily,  and  of 
course  successfully,  is  the  life  which  belongs  to 
the  world  of  our  Father.  It  will  come  the 
moment  when  the  world  really  believes  in  "  Our 
Father."  I  suppose  that  that  sense  of  God's  love 
must  come  first.  But  it  is  not  impossible  for 
those  to  see  what  will  come  next,  who  have  read 
the  four  Gospels.  Those  who  have  some  touch 
or  sense  of  the  Saviour's  life  can  imagine  at  least 
what  is  to  come  to  the  world  when  men  under- 
stand as  well  what  it  is  to  believe  in  the  sonship 
of  all  God's  children.  To  go  about  your  daily 
business,  as  we  say  here  so  often,  as  a  prince  of 
the  blood  royal.  This  is  to  share  the  joy  of  God ; 
it  is  to  use  the  strength  of  God.  To  forget  that 
any  cynic  or  any  fool  or  any  creed  ever  said  that 
we  were  born  in  sin  and  conceived  in  iniquity ;  to 
forget  that  any  priest  or  any  knave  ever  pro- 
claimed the  folly  that  we  were  worms  of  the  dust, 
and  were  to  cry,  "Vile,  vile!"  or,  better  than 
this,  to  grow  up,  as  I  have  known  children  in  this 
church  to  grow  up,  utterly  ignorant  that  there 
ever  was  such  folly  or  cynicism,  which  put  into 
words  such  infinite  depreciations  of  the  sons  of 
God,  and  of  his  daughters.     All  this   is  to   give 


FATHER,    SON,   AND    HOLY   SPIRIT.  5/ 

energy  of  life  and  hope  to  the  work  of  this  world ; 
yes,  and,  let  me  say,  to  its  pleasures ;  to  make 
of  the  work  a  divine  offering,  new  every  morning 
and  fresh  every  evening ;  and  make  the  pleasures, 
as  well,  to  be  so  many  steps  in  the  advance  of 
these  princes  and  princesses,  as  they  go  forward, 
indeed,  from  life  to  life,  from  joy  to  joy,  and  from 
glory  to  glory.  This  vision  seems  somewhat  dim, 
and  men  take  it  as  less  possible  than  that  other 
vision.  God  reveals  himself  as  our  Father  with 
every  morning.  And  the  glory  and  dignity  of 
the  sons  of  God  scattered  this  world  over  has 
no  such  visible  or  tangible  representation.  But 
the  Saviour  was  such  a  visible  representation. 
Apostles,  prophets,  and  martyrs  have  all  lived 
and  died  in  the  certainty  that  this  vision  is  to 
become  more  real  and  more  to  every  generation. 
Every  noble  life  makes  the  vision  more  certain. 
Every  unselfish  death  makes  us  apprehend  better 
what  is  its  range  and  infinitude.  So  that  we  may 
well  believe  that,  as  the  Church  casts  off  its 
hypocrisies,  treads  under  foot  its  shams,  and 
makes  its  liturgies  real,  the  Church  herself  shall 
succeed  in  proclaiming  to  all  children  of  sorrow,  as 
she  has  called  them,  the  infinite  reality  that  they 
are  really  sons  and  daughters  of  the  living  God. 

Then,  and  perhaps  not  till  then,  will  Church  and 
world  know  what  men  have  been  saying  when,  in 
a  half-stupid,  half-mechanical  way,  they  have  pre- 
tended that  they  have  believed  in  the  Holy  Spirit. 


58  FATHER,    SON,   AND    HOLY   SPIRIT. 

One  spirit  with  God  who  loves  the  world  and  the 
same  spirit  in  the  hearts  of  men  and  women  whom 
he  loves  and  who  loves  him ;  to  go  and  come 
in  my  daily  affair  as  God  goes  and  comes  in  his ; 
in  the  same  Holy  Spirit,  as  joyous,  as  pure,  as  un- 
selfish, as  infinite,  —  this  is  what  I  say  is  possible 
when  I  baptize  a  little  child  in  the  name  of  the 
Father  and  of  the  Son  and  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 
This  is  what  I  say  is  possible  when,  with  my  head 
bent,  I  repeat  the  Apostles'  Creed,  and  say  that 
I  believe  in  the  Holy  Spirit.  There  is  a  much 
greater  reality  than  saying  I  believe  it,  and  that 
reality  comes  to  me  when  I  live  in  that  Spirit,  when 
it  inspires  me,  when  it  gives  me  the  strength  of  an 
infinite  child  of  an  infinite  God,  when  it  gives  to 
my  daily  duty  the  breadth  and  range  of  some 
infinite  affair.  Then  it  shows  me  that  the  conse- 
quences of  that  duty  shall  sweep  through  all  time 
and  to  them  there  shall  be  no  distance.  It  shows 
to  me  that  the  success  of  to-day's  endeavor  is  not 
simply  the  cheer  in  my  own  household  or  the 
comfort  of  my  own  friend,  though  that  is  no  trifle. 
It  is  success  ranging  through  all  the  world  and 
touching  all  time ;  for  here  is  the  success,  here  is 
the  victory,  of  the  Holy  Spirit  of  God  himself. 
This  is  the  spirit  in  which  he  moves  the  worlds 
and  sets  them  in  order.  It  is  in  this  spirit  that 
his  sons  and  daughters  live.  They  are  one  in 
him,  he  is  one  with  them.  This  is  it  to  live  and 
move  and  have  my  being  in  rny  God. 


HOW    IMMORTALS    LIVE. 


' '  Things  which  eye  saw  not,  and  ear  heard  not,  and  which  en- 
tered not  into  the  heart  of  man,  whatsoever  things  God  prepared 
for  them  that  love  him.  Unto  us  God  revealed  them  through  the 
Spirit :  for  the  Spirit  searcheth  all  things,  yea,  the  deep  things 
of  God." 

I  Cor.  ii.  9,  lo. 

"  It  is  one  thing  to  say  one  believes  in  immor- 
tality.    It  is  quite  another  to  live  as  an  immortal." 

I  heard  Mr.  John  Weiss  say  this  in  a  sermon 
nearly  fifty  years  ago.  I  can  use  no  better  words 
now  to  state  the  difiference  between  two  habits  of 
life  and  expression.  The  truth  involved  is  shown 
in  the  lives  of  all  the  men  of  infinite  experience. 

Think  how  little  there  is  in  the  four  Gospels 
which  can  be  cited  in  words,  to  a  person  uneasy 
about  infinite  life,  as  one  cites  an  argument. 
There  is  no  demonstration  of  immortality  sug- 
gested or  even  attempted.  There  is  that  difficult 
and  hardly  intelligible  rejoinder  to  the  Saddu- 
cees,  where  it  would  seem  as  if  some  ready  epi- 
gram had  been  mistaken  and  lifted  into  the  place 
of  an  argument.  And  this  is  the  only  approach 
to  what  we  call  demonstration.  On  the  other 
hand,  every  important  conversation  takes  immor- 
tality absolutely  for  granted.  It  is  a  reality  where 
no  argument  is  needed.     It  has  been  settled  once 


6o  HOW   IMMORTALS    LIVE. 

and  forever.  You  do  not  argue  about  it,  you  do 
not  prove  it,  any  more  than  you  prove  the  exist- 
ence of  air  or  the  pressure  of  gravitation.  What 
one  does  see  —  and  it  is  the  central  pulse  of  the 
intense  vitality  of  the  Gospels  —  is  this,  that  Jesus 
lives  as  an  immortal  lives.  He  is  always  looking 
out  into  infinite  life.  Food,  raiment,  shelter, 
always  take  a  secondary  and  inferior  place.  Love, 
society, — faith,  prayer,  —  hope,  heaven,  these  are 
the  primary  matters.  These  are  what  one  talks 
about,  thinks  about,  and  lives  for.  He  does  not 
so  much  as  say  that  he  believes  in  immortality, 
or  that  they  must.  But  he  lives  as  you  know  an 
immortal  would  live,  and  he  takes  it  for  granted 
that  you  will. 

I  do  not  regard  this  as  merely  an  illustration  of 
his  evident  dislike  of  talk  where  it  is  contrasted 
with  work.  That  is  clear  all  along,  that  he  detests 
the  people  of  eager  expression,  who  say,  Lord, 
Lord,  but  do  not  the  things  which  he  says.  There 
is  much  more  than  this.  You  will  find,  I  think, 
that  just  in  proportion  to  the  largeness  of  any 
one's  life,  that  person  refrains  from  talking  about 
life  in  heaven,  as  if  he  could  describe  it,  or  make 
it  evident  to  the  senses. 

To  compare  it  with  a  very  small  thing,  it  is  only 
the  poor  critics,  people  who  are  very  ignorant  of 
music  or  of  other  fine  art,  who  undertake  to  ex- 
plain to  you  in  words  the  power  which  a  noble 
symphony  has  over  one,  or  a  perfect  statue.    Lord 


HOW   IMMORTALS   LIVE.  6 1 

Byron  ridicules  them  as  those  who  "  describe  the 
indescribable.  " 

It  is  on  a  scale  vastly  larger  than  this  that  those 
people  show  their  own  absurdity  who  undertake 
to  make  heaven  visible  to  us,  or  its  language 
audible.  The  precise  truth  for  which  we  want 
expression  is  this :  that  whereas  here  life  is  fet- 
tered and  imprisoned  within  the  somewhat  hard 
control  of  five  senses,  the  infinite  life  is  not  so  fet- 
tered or  controlled.  Infinite  means  unbounded. 
When  Dean  Mansell  wrote  his  book  on  "The  Lim- 
itations of  Religious  Enquiry,"  Dr.  Hedge  said  to 
me,  "Why  does  the  man  want  to  talk  about  the 
limitations  of  that  which  is  unlimited?"  And  one 
feels  the  same  surprise,  not  to  say  disgust,  when  one 
reads  in  the  Koran  of  Mahomet  about  the  roses 
and  the  rubies,  the  pearls  and  the  feasts,  the  houries 
and  the  djins,  which  and  who  make  up  the  heaven 
to  which  the  true  Musselman  is  invited.  Or  take 
the  Book  of  Revelation,  with  which  the  Bible 
ends.  The  poetry  of  that  book  is  simply  magnifi- 
cent, when  it  tells  you  of  thousands  and  thousands 
which  no  man  can  number;  when  it  tells  you  of 
voices  which  no  one  can  pretend  to  interpret  or 
understand.  But  when  the  language  turns  to  num- 
bering and  interpreting,  it  fails.  We  come  to 
visions  of  four  square  cities  measured  by  measur- 
ing-rods, and  built  upon  stones  whose  mineralogy 
is  explained  to  us,  and  we  turn  the  page  uneasily 
and  seek  for  more  of  the  other  kind.     All  this  is 


62  HOW   IMMORTALS    LIVE. 

to  say  that  audible  language  is,  from  its  very- 
nature,  earthly  and  finite.  So  far  as  it  goes,  it  goes 
very  well,  but  woe  to  him  who  tries  to  make  it  go 
farther.  My  horse  or  my  ass  may  bear  me  well  to 
the  shore  of  the  infinite  ocean,  but  woe  to  me  if  I 
try  to  make  him  carry  me  over.  Human  language 
is  necessarily  confined  to  the  affairs  of  the  five 
senses.  When  it  tries  to  describe  the  realities 
which  are  noted  by  a  thousand  senses  outside  their 
range,  human  language  of  necessity  breaks  down. 

But  human  life  is  not  limited  within  five  senses. 
I  lie  in  my  bed  at  midnight:  I  hear  nothing,  I 
see  nothing,  I  taste  nothing,  I  smell  nothing, 
indeed,  I  feel  nothing  but  the  even  temperature  of 
98**  Fahr.,  maintained  in  my  body  between  the 
blankets  and  the  mattress ;  so  little  do  my  five 
senses  help  me  there.  But  my  life,  all  the  same, 
is  taking  an  unbounded  range,  if  I  choose,  in 
memory  or  in  hope,  in  prayer  or  in  faith,  or  in  the 
absolutely  unlimited  sweep  of  love.  I  am  living, 
if  I  choose,  in  a  range  of  being  which  does  not 
want  to  express  itself  in  English  words,  or  German 
words,  or  Latin  words.  It  is  perfectly  indifferent 
to  such  earthy,  wooden,  carnal,  clumsy,  finite  ex- 
pressions. I  would  as  soon  get  out  of  bed  and 
light  the  lamp  and  find  canvas  and  an  easel  and 
try  to  paint  a  picture  there,  of  my  love  or  my 
aspiration,  with  colors  called  Antwerp  blue  or  rose 
madder  and  flake  white,  as  undertake  to  express 


HOW   IMMORTALS   LIVE.  Q^ 

the  same  aspiration  or  the  same  love  in  two 
hundred  and  fifty  words,  of  which  the  philologists 
tell  me  that  fifty-seven  per  cent,  are  derived  from  the 
Saxon,  twenty-two  from  the  Latin,  and  the  rest  from 
the  Keltic  or  the  Icelandic  or  from  somewhere  else. 
All  that  is  of  the  earth,  earthy.  The  word  is  as 
earthy  as  the  pigment.  And  here  is  the  essential 
reason  why  any  master  of  life  will  not  fool  with 
these  clumsy  expressions. 

"  Whereunto  shall  I  liken  the  kingdom  of 
God?"  This  is  the  groan  of  the  Saviour,  indig- 
nant because  people  want  to  have  infinite  realities 
clamped  and  cramped  in  human  language.  It 
is  the  reason  why  all  poets  tell  you  that  there 
are  more  realities  in  heaven  and  earth  than  your 
written  philosophy  pretends  to.  I  may  say  in 
passing,  as  of  an  illustration  not  very  important, 
that  in  this  truth  we  find  the  reason  for  the  utter 
futility  and  ghastly  dulness  of  the  people  who  call 
themselves  the  spiritualists  of  to-day. 


To  live  as  an  immortal  lives  is  a  very  different 
matter.  How  often  in  history  a  great  man  or 
woman,  true  child  of  God,  has  done  God's  work 
as  God  himself  might  do  it,  who  had  no  power  of 
describing  the  deed  when  it  was  done.  Years  after 
him, — centuries  after,  —  this  poet  or  that,  this 
artist  or  that,  strives,  unequal,  to  describe  or  to 
represent  the  deed  itself,  which  has  long  before 
been  approved  by  all  the  sons  of  God  as  being 


64  HOW   IMMORTALS    LIVE. 

indeed  divine.  Arnold  of  Winkelried  rushes 
forward  on  the  Austrian  lances  with  the  cry, 
"Make  way  for  Liberty!" 

In  another  language,  five  hundred  years  after, 
an  English  poet  tells  the  story.  But  the  divine 
deed,  of  course,  is  the  Swiss  peasant's  who  gave 
his  life  a  ransom  for  many. 

Perhaps  the  best  things  in  poetry  are  its  suc- 
cesses, when  it  does  show  how  what  we  call  the 
most  insignificant  of  God's  children  is  indeed 
significant  when  he  becomes  himself  a  creative 
force,  enters  into  God's  work,  and  goes  about  his 
Father's  business.  What  are  the  conquests  of 
religion?  Invariably  you  find  that  they  are  not 
the  results  of  logic  or  deitiOnstration ;  they  have 
not  come  from  crusades  or  other  organizations : 
they  are  wrought  by  the  flash  which  we  like  to  call 
electric,  from  one  devout,  and  loving,  and  hopeful 
life  to  another.  As  we  felt  a  few  days  ago  at  an 
open  grave,  when  we  remembered  how  one 
woman's  life  had  quickened  and  inspired  other 
lives  around  her,  while,  perhaps,  she  had  never 
taught  a  word  of  dogmatic,  or  never  argued  out 
a  conclusion  in  language. 

To  live  as  an  immortal  means  that  one  uses 
thus  the  things  of  earch  and  time  for  infinite 
results.  The  New  Testament  text  on  this  matter 
is  seldom  understood,  but  covers  the  whole.  The 
Saviour  directs  his  disciples  to  use  the  things  of 


HOW   IMMORTALS    LIVE.  65 

this  world  in  such  wise  that  when  they  fail,  as  they 
must  fail,  the  angels  of  light  may  receive  them 
into  everlasting  habitations.  It  is  as  a  boy  of 
five  years,  on  the  carpet,  may  use  his  wooden 
blocks  so  as  to  take  into  the  range  of  his  knowl- 
edge those  laws  of  gravitation  on  which  the 
movements  of  planets  and  comets  depend.  It  is 
to  make  my  bargains  at  the  grocer's  shop  with 
that  courtesy,  that  integrity,  that  justice  and 
steadiness  with  which  I  should  talk  with  Raphael 
or  Uriel  if  I  happened  to  be  in  the  business  of 
Paradise  Lost,  and  should  show  them  that  I  was 
quite  their  equal  in  all  matters  of  conscience  and 
inspiration.  Or,  in  a  word,  it  is  to  bear  in  mind 
all  along  that,  though  the  sun  is  to  set  to-night  at 
five  o'clock,  there  are  regions  of  space  where  it 
never  sets ;  and  though  the  sun  is  burning  itself 
out  and  will  be  done  with  when  some  myriads  of 
aeons  of  ages  have  gone  by,  that  I,  who  walk  in 
the  shadow  or  in  the  sunlight,  am  never  to  be  done 
with,  and  that  I  may  use  the  shadow  or  the  sun- 
light for  my  affair  without  any  slavish  subser- 
viency to  their  accidental  changes. 


For  training  in  this  consciousness  and  certainty 
of  infinite  life  I  am,  as  you  know,  always  urging 
young  people  to  be  familiar  with  the  processes  of 
nature,  as  one  sees  them  where  they  are  not  con- 
trolled, —  not  harnessed  for  immediate  and  tem- 
porary purposes.     Such    a  sleigh-ride  as  that  of 


66  HOW   IMMORTALS   LIVE. 

last  week,  in  an  hour  of  the  glory  of  nature,  lifts 
a  man  above  mere  earthy  entanglements,  as  no 
logical  demonstration  of  his  being  can  do,  and  as 
very  little  formal  poetry  does.  Whenever  Script- 
ure achieves  such  a  miracle,  wherever  we  find 
that  Scripture,  it  is  then  that  we  call  it  inspired. 
For  inspiration  is  the  presence  of  the  Infinite  or 
Holy  Spirit  in  words,  in  inventions,  in  heroism, 
or  in  any  other  human  affair.  Whether,  then, 
one  study  nature  through  the  revelations  of  the 
microscope,  whether  he  study  nature  in  the  stars 
at  night,  whether  he  study  nature  as  he  opens  a 
bud  to  see  how  life  is  enlarging  itself  and  pre- 
paring to  enlarge  itself,  or  whether  he  study  the 
old  records  of  the  folding  of  the  strata  into 
mountains,  or  travel  afar,  afoot  or  on  the  seas, 
that  he  may  know  more,  whether  of  the  curve 
of  waves  or  the  heaving  up  of  sands,  he  trains 
himself  to  infinite  life  all  the  time.  One  does  not 
say  to  "  larger"  life,  because  that  word  is  too  small, 
but  to  a  life  which  is  infinite,  unbounded,  and  does 
not  know  our  measure  of  great  or  little.  Every 
step  that  the  schools  make  in  this  direction  is  a 
gain  in  real  education,  whether  it  be  or  be  not  an 
advance  in  instruction.  The  use  of  the  Natural 
History  Society,  of  the  museums,  of  such  clubs 
as  the  Appalachian  Club,  and  everything  which 
calls  men  out  from  their  handicrafts,  whether  of 
the  brain  or  of  the  fingers,  into  this  sympathy 
with  the  life  of  the  world  and  of  the  universe,  is 


HOW    IMMORTALS    LIVE.  6/ 

SO  much  help  to  him  who  is  thus  emancipated. 
Indeed,  I  suppose  that  here  is  the  real  reason  why, 
at  bottom  and  at  heart,  imprisonment,  or  being 
shut  up  away  from  the  courses  of  nature,  has 
come  to  be  rightly  esteemed  as  the  most  terrible 
punishment  which  man  can  inflict  upon  his 
brother.  The  man  \vho  eagerly  and  continuously 
tries  in  such  fashion  to  cultivate  the  infinite  secret 
of  nature  lives  as  an  immortal. 

It  is  virtually  to  say  the  same  thing,  —  simply 
with  a  change  of  the  illustration,  —  when  one 
speaks  of  that  enlargement  of  life  as  infinite  which 
comes  from  frankly  throwing  ourselves  into  the 
great  brotherhood  of  mankind.  Of  course  I  may 
go  about  my  daily  business  merely  with  the  wish 
to  make  a  profit  for  myself,  —  to  receive  more 
than  I  give  out,  to  be  richer  to-night  than  I  v/as 
this  morning.  But  I  may  go  into  it  with  the  en- 
thusiasm with  which  a  great  general  makes  an 
army  move  because  he  loves  his  countrj'^.  Every 
thread  in  my  shuttle  as  I  throw  it  across  the  loom, 
every  word  that  I  write  upon  the  paper,  or  every 
type  which  I  set  in  my  composing-stick,  may  be 
my  contribution  to  the  welfare  of  mankind.  I 
hsard  a  man  say  once  that  he  had  rather  live  in  a 
work-shop  than  in  a  trade-shop.  What  he  meant 
was  that  he  wanted  to  be  a  contributor  to  the  real 
comfort  of  the  whole  human  race.  He  liked  to 
feel,  when  he  made  a  screw,  that  that  screw  was  of 
use  in  South  Africa   or  in  Alaska.     He    liked    to 


68  now   IMMORTALS    LIVE. 

feel  that  he  was  doing  his  part  as  a  creative  force, 
and  that  God  had  not  miscalculated  when  He  sent 
him  into  the  world.  I  see  no  reason  why  a  man 
in  a  trade- shop  should  not  have  the  same  feeling; 
but  perhaps  it  does  not  suggest  itself  quite  so 
readily.  Trade-shop  or  work-shop,  wherever  a 
man  is,  if  he  be  at  work  in  the  brotherhood,  and 
bears  in  mind  the  service  he  is  rendering  for  the 
brotherhood,  he  will  be  lifted  wholly  above  the 
plane  of  the  brute,  eating  that  his  own  hunger 
may  be  appeased,  and  seeking  forage  that  he  may 
eat,  and  going  and  coming  only  that  he  may  seek 
forage.  In  such  service,  as  George  Herbert  says, 
there  is  nothing  mean ;  in  such  service  for  man- 
kind one  comes,  as  in  the  study  of  nature,  into 
the  infinite  relations.  And  as  a  thousand  poets 
have  sung  and  a  thousand  philosophers  have  said, 
this  service  also  extends  itself  beyond  the  range  of 
1892  or  of  this  century.  I  touch  the  button  to- 
day, but  the  thrill  which  results  from  my  deter- 
mination is  a  thrill  which  spreads  not  only  through 
all  space,  but  through  all  time.  So  far  I  am  one 
with  God  and  nature  in  the  affair  of  His  eternity. 

"  Blessed  are  the  merciful,  for  they  shall  obtain 
mercy."  This  was  the  beatitude  as  the  Saviour 
announced  it  on  the  mountain.  To  his  own  mind 
it  involved  the  enlargement  of  merciful  life  of  him 
who  rendered  this  service  or  that  service.  He 
saw  the  disciple  who  had  accepted  the  promise 
more  and  more  godlike,  more    and  more  divine, 


HOW   IMMORTALS    LIVE.  6g 

a  partner  indeed  of  the  universe,  in  precise  pro- 
portion as  he  passed  outside  his  own  physical 
effort  or  enjoyment  into  the  service  which  God, 
without  leaving  it  Himself,  had  intrusted  to  His 
children  of  mankind. 

To  make  one's  life  as  large  as  this  in  its  relations 
is  to  live  as  an  immortal. 

It  is  his  business  to  enter  into  the  life  of  the 
universe,  his  business  to  enter  into  the  common 
life  of  his  race,  —  yes,  and  to  make  it  better. 
And  whatever  he  does  in  such  matters  he  does  it 
under  infinite  law.  He  does  not  need  to  inquire 
what  are  the  customs  or  statutes  of  people  round 
him.  His  tenure  is  not  a  temporary  tenure,  and 
his  laws  are  the  eternal  laws.  Among  the  most 
interesting  of  the  fairy  tales  of  our  time,  or  of 
classical  times,  are  stories  to  illustrate  such  life. 
The  gods  descend  to  live  with  men,  as  Apollo 
with  Admetus,  as  Jupiter  with  Deucalion  and 
Pyrrha.  The  god  so  housed  in  a  cabin  by  the 
hour  must  be  indifferent  to  its  discomforts.  He 
must  eat  his  bran  bread  as  if  it  were  ambrosia, 
and  drink  his  black  broth  as  if  it  were  nectar. 
He  must  correct  the  errors  of  the  housekeeping 
or  of  the  farm  as  if  he  were  setting  right  the 
movement  of  a  planet.  But  he  must  not  be  crit- 
ical about  the  bed  in  which  he  sleeps,  or  the 
grammar  of  those  to  whom  he  is  talking.  He  is 
above  such  trifles,  because  he  is  divine ;  he  is 
Jove,  or  the  son  of  Jove ;   he  is  infinite,  immortal. 


70  HOW   IMMORTALS    LIVE. 

Such  Stories  owe  their  interest  to  our  reminis- 
cences of  our  own  immortality  and  the  sense  of 
our  infinity  which  they  quicken  in  us.  We  are  in 
these  cabins  of  ours,  or  houses,  or  palaces  —  this 
house  of  our  earthly  tabernacle  —  for  a  few  score 
years,  —  what  matter  whether  twoscore,  three- 
score, or  four.  No  matter,  if  while  I  live  them 
through  I  am  speaking  the  old  language  of 
heaven,  and  do  not  lose  my  accent;  doing  the  old 
work  of  heaven,  though  it  be  in  the  ploughing  of  a ' 
furrow  or  the  amusement  of  a  child,  —  if,  indeed, 
I  be  not  warped  aside  to  the  gluttony  of  a  beast 
or  the  laziness  of  an  oyster,  but  if  I  go  about  my 
Father's  business. 

Eye  hath  not  seen,  no,  nor  ear  heard,  no,  nor 
hath  it  entered  into  the  heart  of  man  to  imagine 
what  are  the  infinite  things  open  to  those  who  love 
God,  But  God  has  revealed  them  by  His  Spirit. 
Whoso  really  liveth, —  says  the  Saviour,  making 
the  same  statement,  —  whoso  liveth  in  the  infinite 
life,  whoso  believeth  that  God  is  Father  and  that 
we  are  children, — he  does  not  die.  He  shall 
never  die.  It  is  not  to  the  argument  of  a  logi- 
cian that  He  intrusts  this  truth.  He  intrusts  it  to 
the  infinite  experience  of  a  living  man  —  a  man 
who  really  lives ;  who  lives  and  moves  and  has 
his  being:  in  his  God. 


IMITATORS   OF   GOD. 


■  "Be  ye  imitators  of  God,  as  beloved  children,  and  walk  in 

love,  as  Christ  also  loved  _you." 

Ephesians  v.  I. 


It  is  a  bold  demand.  But  absolute  religion  is 
satisfied  with  nothing  less.  As  we  open  a  new- 
year,  it  is  the  demand  we  are  to  keep  in  sight. 
These  plans  of  ours  are  not  the  plans  of  beasts  or 
of  fishes  or  insects.  They  are  the  plans  of  chil- 
dren of  God.  We  propose  to  enter  that  infinite 
life  in  1892.  We  propose  to  discover  that  land  of 
our  bounded  range  which,  perhaps,  we  have  never 
seen  before.  We  are  of  God's  nature.  We  propose 
to  do  His  will.     We  will  be  imitators  of  God. 

A  boy  changes  into  a  man  when  he  takes  his 
instructions  from  headquarters,  — when  he  asks 
God  what  is  his  duty  to-day,  and  from  Him  takes 
his  answer. 

It  is  thus,  also,  that  a  girl  changes  into  a 
woman.  The  change  in  women  comes  more  sud- 
denly than  with  men.  You  leave  your  little  girl 
playmate  for  three  months,  and  when  you  meet 
her  after  that  time  you  find  she  is  another  person. 
A  greater  change  comes  over  her  in  that  time  than 
comes  over  a  boy  in  many  years. 


7-2  IMITATORS    OF   GOD. 

Boys,  on  the  other  hand,  are  much  more  apt 
than  girls  to  be  separated  from  home  early  in  life. 
They  have  to  form  the  habit  then  of  going  to 
headquarters,  and  many  a  man  will  tell  you  that 
his  seriousness  of  life,  his  consecration  to  life,  be- 
gan when  he  made  the  change  from  his  early 
home. 

Our  business  to-day  is  to  ask  carefully  what 
help,  if  any,  can  be  given  to  boy  or  girl  in  this 
business.  How  shall  a  man  so  order  his  life  that 
he  may  have  every  day  the  personal  intimacy  with 
God  which  w\\\,  first,  tell  him  what  he  has  to  do, 
and,  second,  give  him  the  strength  and  judgment 
with  which  to  do  it,  in  his  imitation  of  God. 

I  make  it  a  rule  of  my  own  life  to  see  every 
day  some  one  whom  I  know  to  be  my  superior. 
But  it  is  very  difificult  to  enforce  this  rule.  Often 
and  often  I  fail,  —  I  am  always  sorry  when  I  fail,  — 
but  one  cannot  command  events.  The  man  or 
woman  you  want  to  see  may  not  be  at  home ;  or, 
in  the  fifteen  minutes  you  have  for  the  interview, 
you  may  be  waiting  for  a  street-car  at  the  corner. 
You  and  I  must  not  complain  when  our  plans 
break  down  —  if  we  have  done  our  part.  That 
probably  means  that  the  plans  of  One  who  knows 
more  than  we  do  have  succeeded.  But  if  you 
and  I  find  this  difficulty  in  intimacies  with  per- 
sonal friends  here,  it  is  our  business  to  care  even 
more  assiduously  about  our  daily  conversation  and 
intimacy   with    the    nearest    of    our    friends,    the 


IMITATORS    OF    GOD.  ^^ 

most  powerful  and  the  most  loving,  and  to  be  sure 
that  there,  at  least,  no  circumstance  or  accident  of 
time  or  of  place  shall  prevent  the  interview. 

Young  men  or  women  will  be  really  in  earnest 
about  this  if  they  have  fairly  tried  the  great  ex- 
periment themselves,  or  if  they  have  rightly  and 
carefully  ordered  life,  in  the  recognition  of  Our 
Father  as  a  personal  friend,  seeking  His  advice, 
and  acting  by  it. 

Take  the  Life  of  lives,  the  life  of  the  Leader  of 
leaders,  the  Lord  of  lords,  the  Saviour  of  men. 
We  begin  to  see  as  mere  matter  of  fact  and  out- 
side history  how  he  is  becoming  King  of  kings 
for  this  world.  Of  that  life,  the  centre  is  daily 
communion  with  God.  He  sets  on  foot  the  great 
practical  movement  which  changed  the  world. 
He  sends  out  two  and  two,  his  twelve  apostles, 
—  yes,  and  he  does  this  after  spending  the  night 
in  prayer.  He  had  gone  away  to  the  mountain 
solitude  that  he  might  tell  his  Father  what  he 
needed,  and  from  his  Father  receive  directions. 

Read  Paul  with  any  attention,  and  you  find  the 
same  thing.  All  that  is  said  there  about  the 
Spirit  explaining  this,  and  the  Spirit  explaining 
that,  —  about  the  apostles  receiving  this  from  the 
Spirit  and  that  from  the  Spirit,  —  means  simply 
that  he  did  not  trust  only  to  any  logic  of  his  own, 
or  any  observation  of  his  own,  but  that  he  sought 
the  Holy  Spirit,  whose  other  name  is  Our  Father. 


74  IMITATORS    OF   GOD. 

Bear  in  mind  all  along  that  any  distinction  be- 
tween Our  Father  and  the  present  Holy  Spirit  is 
merely  artificial  and  technical,  and  the  folly  of  the 
schools.  I  must  not  take  time  about  this,  but  the 
same  truth  holds  all  through  history.  The  mo- 
ment you  come  upon  any  one  of  the.  world's  real 
leaders  —  there  are  not  many  of  them  —  you 
come  upon  a  man  who  was  in  distinct  personal  com- 
munion with  God.  The  two  instances  which  are 
perhaps  most  cited  are  very  good  ones.  They 
are  in  the  lives  of  Luther  and  Columbus,  —  two 
men  who  habitually  retired  from  personal  conver- 
sation with  princes,  and  captains,  and  other  men, 
that  they  might  ask  God  what  their  duty  was,  and 
from  Him  might  receive,  first,  an  answer  to  that 
question,  and,  second,  the  power  by  which  they 
were  to  discharge  that  duty.  Mr.  Fiske  has  just 
now  made  the  statement — which  for  myself  I  think 
will  be  received  very  seriously  —  that  the  first  of  liv- 
ing men,  in  the  catalogue  of  men  so  far  known,  is 
Oliver  Cromwell,  the  great  founder  of  the  English 
Commonwealth,  the  person  to  whose  tenderness 
and  wisdom  we  owe  it  that  New  England  is  New 
England.  Determine  this  as  you  please,  there  is 
another  instance  where  the  power  of  the  man 
comes  from  this  daily  communion  with  the  infinite 
power  which  rules  all  worlds. 

Simply  stated,  here  is  the  law.  The  voice  of 
that  infinite  power  whom  the  Saviour  called  Our 
Father  is  what  we  call  right,  and  the    man  who 


IMITATORS   OF   GOD.  75 

seeks  his  instructions  at  headquarters  —  if  I  may 
use  the  same  figure  I  used  before  —  is  the  person 
who  succeeds  in  doing  right;  and  the  person  who 
does  right  has  the  alliance  of  angels  and  arch- 
angels, and  of  all  good  men  and  women. 

This  I  say  as  a  simple  outside  fact  of  history, 
which  must  attract  the  attention  of  any  intelligent 
young  man  or  young  woman.  Now,  our  business 
to-day  is  to  ask  whether  there  are  any  methods  or 
forms  which  can  assist  the  young  man  or  young 
woman  who  has  highly  resolved  in  every  day  to 
hold  this  personal  communion  with  the  All- 
Father,  Our  Father,  the  Infinite  Spirit,  whose 
voice  is  right?  To  help  in  this  personal  intimacy, 
these  churches  are  formed.  Let  the  leaders  of 
them,  and  the  members  of  them,  hold  well  in  mind 
that  this  is  their  central  business.  It  will  be  a 
very  good  thing  if  our  New  Year's  resolutions 
help  to  sustain  the  "  Church  of  the  Holy  Spirit," 
or  the  "Sixth  Congregational  Church"  of  the 
town,  or  if.it  engage  in  active  charities,  or  if  the 
members  become  better  acquainted  with  each 
other.  All  these  are  very  good  things,  but  our 
central  business  is  to  encourage  young  people  to 
hold  daily  communion  with  God.  That  is  what 
the  church  is,  in  the  first  place,  for.  They  can 
try  their  wings  in  different  ways,  but  the  first  busi- 
ness is  to  encourage  them  in  learning  to  fly.  And 
there  is  a  certain  danger,  which  we  have  all  of  us 
observed,  that   the    interest  of  studying   out  the 


76  IMITATORS   OF   GOD. 

duties  which  will  belong  to  him  who  has  learned 
to  fly,  shall  be  so  great  that  the  other  study  of 
flight  itself,  of  flying  strongly  and  well,  of  mount- 
ing up  on  wings  as  eagles,  shall  slip  out  of  sight 
and  attention. 

I  have  found  no  wiser  rule,  in  the  advice  which 
I  have  given  to  young  people,  than  that  which  I 
myself  received  from  John  Weiss.  He  said  it  in  a 
sermon  which  he  preached  to  the  Unitarian  con- 
vention at  Portland,  I  suppose  thirty  years  ago. 
To  those  doctors  of  divinity,  men  of  learning,  men 
of  practice,  manufacturers,  merchants,  inventors,  to 
the  mothers  of  families,  to  young  men  starting  in 
life,  to  young  women  starting  in  life,  he  said,  "  Go 
away  every  day  from  other  people,  without  their 
knowing  it,  and  for  five  minutes  or  for  ten  minutes 
sit  in  a  room  by  yourself  to  see  if  God  has  any- 
thing to  say  to  you."  I  believe  that  to  be  an  ex- 
cellent, practical,  four-square  rule  in  the  direction 
of  life. 

Side  by  side  with  this  advice  I  tell  young  people 
who  ask  me  for  advice,  to  have  in  that  room  two 
or  three  of  the  books  which  they  have  found  most 
helpful  in  this  affair,  or  which  their  friends  have 
found  so.  Here,  in  the  first  place,  is  the  use  of  the 
Bible.  It  is  not  simply  as  a  book  of  ethics  that 
the  Bible  is  valuable,  certainly  not  as  a  book  of 
history,  least  of  all  as  a  book  of  doctrine.  Its 
value  comes  from  its  recording  so  much  of  the  in- 
timacy of  men  and  women  who  have   known  how 


IMITATORS    OF    GOD. 


77 


to  live  with  Him  who  is  the  Author  of  hfe.  And 
you  do  get  expressions  in  the  Psalms,  the  prophets, 
the  Gospels,  in  the  epistles,  and  in  the  Book 
of  Revelation,  which  make  real  to  you  the  ab- 
solute possible  intimacy  of  the  child  with  the 
Father,  as  hardly  anything  else  in  literature  does. 
The  Bible  is  therefore  the  prayer-book  of  Chris- 
tians. When  people  talk  to  me  of  this  or  that 
liturgy  with  enthusiasm,  I  always  try  to  listen  civ- 
illy;  but  I  always  say,  "  There  is  no  such  book  of 
prayers  as  the  Bible."  On  this  Bible  you  will  put 
one  or  two  of  the  books,  from  a  small  list,  —  I  should 
not  say  more  than  ten  or  twelve,  —  which  are  easily 
accessible  in  the  English  language.  A  first-rate 
hymn  book  is  one  of  these  ;  and  occasionally  some 
one  edits  a  collection  of  sacred  poetry  which  is 
worth  having  there.  Besides  these,  take  your 
choice  from  Thomas  a  Kempis,  which,  if  you  can, 
you  had  better  read  in  Latin;  Fenelon,  Will- 
iam Law,  and  Scougal.  "  Owen  Feltham's  Re- 
solves "  is  a  good  book.  So  is  The  Roman 
Breviary,  if  you  can  read  it  in  Latin ;  and  for 
many  reasons,  Marcus  Aurelius  and  Epictetus. 
I  mention  these  because  they  are  my  favorites. 
Any  good  adviser  will  add  three  or  four  more  of 
his  favorites  to  the  list.  Observe,  I  do  not  mean 
that  you  shall  have  them  all  there  at  one  time.  But 
I  would  have  some  one  or  two  of  them  beside  the 
Bible.  I  would  then  cultivate  the  habit  of  going 
away,  as  Mr.  Weiss  says,  to  listen  if  God  has  any- 


78  IMITATORS    OF   GOD. 

thing  to  say  to  me.  I  would  not  hesitate  to  open 
at  random  into  one,  two,  or  three  of  these  books, 
and  take  the  particular  suggestion  which  came  to 
me  and  read  a  few  lines.  I  would  turn  it  over  in 
my  mind.  But  I  would  remember  all  along  that 
this  is  not  a  mere  intellectual  process  that  I  am  en- 
gaged in.  I  am  engaged  in  communion  with  the 
Infinite  Spirit  from  which  I  am  born,  to  which  I 
return,  whose  work  I  share,  whose  light  I  can  re- 
ceive, and  into  whose  joy  I  mean  to  enter. 

So  much  for  my  personal  duty.  Now,  so  far 
as  my  influence  goes  in  the  household  in  which  I 
live,  I  would  unite  this  personal  duty  with  the 
habit  of  the  people  in  that  house,  or  with  those  to 
whom  I  am  closest  bound,  say  my  brothers  and 
sisters,  or  my  children.  If,  without  any  formality, 
or  with  as  little  as  is  possible,  we  can  meet  by  the 
piano  and  sing  a  hymn  every  day,  in  the  morning 
or  in  the  evening,  as  may  be  most  convenient,  or 
if  some  one  reads  to  us  three  or  four  verses  of  the 
Bible,  or  if  we  join  together  in  saying  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  or  in  reading  from  any  other  book  of  de- 
votion, there  is  no  question  that  we  shall  give  our- 
selves a  chance  to  go  to  that  day's  business,  or 
the  next  day's  business,  more  alive  to  the  sense 
of  the  common  life.  We  shall  understand  better 
that  no  one  of  us  is  paddling  a  separate  boat,  we 
shall  see  better  that  we  are  all  engaged  in  one 
great  enterprise,  in  one  great  voyage,  and  that  in 
that  voyage  we  have  the  power,  and,  as  I  said,  the 


IMITATORS   OF   GOD.  79 

joy,  if  we  want  to  take  it,  of  Him  who  provides 
the  life  of  each  and  all. 

But  both  these  endeavors  —  the  endeavors  for 
personal  communion  with  God  and  the  endeavor 
to  quicken  the  whole  circle  of  friends  to  a  life 
nothing  less  than  that  of  God's  sons  and  daughters 
—  involve  our  Sunday  privilege  in  this  place. 
When  we  meet  each  other  in  the  street,  in  the 
cars,  or  at  a  party,  we  who  see  each  other  here  on 
Sunday,  we  always  have,  as  the  central  thought, 
the  place  where  we  met  last,  and  the  dominant  of 
this  church  and  this  hour  of  song  and  prayer. 
We,  at  least,  need  not  begin  with  talk  about  the 
weather.  We  have  met  God  in  each  other's  com- 
pany. We  are  at  home  in  His  house  together,  and 
so  far  we  are  at  home  with  each  other  wherever  we 
go.  So  we  have  for  such  upward  flight  as  I  have 
described,  the  great  help  of  the  sympathy  of 
"  Together." 

And  thus  what  I  have  said  leads  us  to  speak 
of  public  worship.  For  the  endeavors  for  per- 
sonal communion  and  any  step  toward  quick- 
ening the  circle  in  which  we  live,  —  all  suggest  a 
wider  intimacy.  If,  when  one  of  us  goes  into 
another  house  to  visit,  this  custom  of  singing  a 
hymn  together  at  the  piano  is  a  custom  which  has 
been  taken  up  in  all  the  houses  in  the  town,  there 
will  be  less  of  what  I  call  formality  about  it.  It 
will  not  seem  a  matter  of  mechanism,  it  will  seem 


8o  .    IMITATORS    OF   GOD. 

a  simple  matter  of  the  regular  daily  life.  We 
shall  accept  it  as  we  accept  the  fact  that  every 
family  takes  a  newspaper.  It  will  not  seem  any 
more  strange.  And  that  analogy  might  be 
pushed :  one  family  takes  one  newspaper  and 
another  takes  another.  So,  these  different  families 
might  signify  their  accord  in  worship  of  the  life  of 
God  in  different  ways ;  but  is  not  it  clear  enough, 
that  some  such  general  organization  with  this  ob- 
ject as  every  Sunday  enforces  will  help  every 
separate  household  in  the  wish  and  effort  to  draw 
closer  to  God  as  every  day  goes  by? 

To  repeat  words  which  I  heard  last  week  by  a 
real  leader  of  men,  what  we  want  in  New  England 
is  to  encourage  usages  of  piety.  There  is  no  reason 
to  think  that  there  is  less  piety  now  than  there 
ever  was  —  that  is,  less  love  of  God.  What  is  de- 
sirable is  that  the  usages  of  piety  shall  be  kept 
even  with  the  other  usages  of  the  time,  and  that 
in  the  crowd  and  pressure  of  our  daily  life  these 
usages  shall  not  be  thrust  out  of  sight,  out  of  hear- 
ing, or  out  of  the  memory. 

Now  it  is  for  this  very  thing  that  the  church 
gathers  us  here  every  Sunday  for  this  winter.  It 
is  for  this  that  the  noblest  genius  composes  for  us 
the  sacred  music  of  the  Mass.  For  this  that  we 
do  our  best  to  jnterpret  it.  For  this  that  we  ask 
these  children  to  meet  in  the  Sunday-school.  For 
this,  really,  that  the  great  machine  of  public 
instruction    is    desired.     For  this  that  the  Public 


IMITATORS    OF   GOD.  8 1 

Library  asks  you  to  turn  aside  from  chatter  and 
commune  with  the  noblest  men  and  the  best 
women.  And  this  is  the  promise.  If  to-day,  which 
is  happily  shielded  from  the  clatter  and  hurry  of 
yesterday :  if  you  will  so  far  set  in  order  in  an 
hour's  careful  resolution,  your  half-formed  plans 
for  the  winter,  so  that  beyond  peradventure  the 
Spirit  of  God  shall  give  to  all  life,  and  the  dignity 
of  life;  if,  I  do  not  say  in  an  hour's  resolution,  but 
in  the  prayer  of  one  minute,  you  gain  God's  con- 
firmation of  such  a  purpose,  you  shall  know  this 
day  twelvemonth,  as  none  of  my  parables  can  teach 
you,  what  Paul  meant  when  he  said,  "  Walk  in  the 
Spirit,"  and  what  Christ  meant  when  he  said, "  Life 
more  abundantly."  You  shall  quit  the  little  stag- 
nant pool  of  the  dock  in  which  your  ship  has  laid 
since  she  was  built,  and  you  shall  sail  fresh  and 
free  over  the  unending  ocean.  We  have  all  the 
same  power  of  eyesight.  But  an  East  Indian 
fakir  bends  his  head  downward  and  uses  his  eye- 
sight always  to  contemplate  the  heart- beat  in  his 
own  bosom.  He  calls  that  "  consecration."  An- 
other trains  His  eyes  and  fortifies  them  to  look 
through  the  heavens,  with  this  or  that  enginery  of 
the  observatory,  so  that  he  shall  walk  with  Orion  in 
his  courses,  and  be  a  freeman  of  the  universe,  with 
the  privileges  of  Arcturus  and  his  suns.  The  one 
of  them  has  the  same  optic  nerve  as  the  other. 
But  the  range,  the  life,  are  so  far  different.  The 
body  is  earthly.     Care  for  it;   attend  to  it,  —  and 


82  '  IMITATORS   OF   GOD. 

SO  far  your  life  is  earthly  too.  Its  heavenly  side  is 
the  outside.  It  extends  as  far  as  the  universe  ex- 
tends; as  far  as  the  God  who  rules  that  universe. 
Make  Him  your  daily  companion ;  talk  to  Him ; 
listen  to  Him  ;  walk  with  Him  ;  work  with  Him  ; 
—  and  you  find  what  is  the  abundance  of  Life. 
You  find  the  meaning  of  that  phrase,  "  The  king- 
dom of  God."  You  have  the  certainty  of  the 
present  heaven. 


[This  sermon  was  preached  as   a   New  Year's  sermon  at 
the  South  Congregational  Church.] 


INSTALLATION    OF    REV.   JOHN 
CUCKSON. 

Arlixgton-Street  Church,  Boston,  May  ii,  1892. 


We  also,  when  we  were  children,  were  held  in  bondage,  —  but 
when  the  fulness  of  time  came,  God  sent  forth  his  Son  that  we 
might  receive  the  adoption  of  sons. 

Gaxatians  iv.  3,  4. 

It  is  impossible  to  meet  here,  with  the  happy- 
outlook  of  this  occasion,  without  recalling  the 
memories  of  this  pulpit,  and  of  that  famous 
church  in  Federal  street  from  which  so  much 
went  forth  for  the  blessing  of  the  world. 

Its  modern  history  begins  when  Jeremiah  Bel- 
knap, with  his  own  wisdom  and  devotion,  led  it 
out  from  the  somewhat  limited  notions  of  a  circle 
of  Scotch  exiles,  s"nging  the  songs  of  the  Lord  in  a 
strange  land.  We  owe  to  him  a  great  step  forward 
in  the  selection  of  our  hymns.  I  think  his  hymn- 
book  is  not  now  in  use,  but  I  have  used  it  in  public 
service.  Will  you  let  me  indulge  myself,  as  we 
install  a  new  minister  in  this  honored  pulpit,  by 
saying  just  a  word  of  each  of  his  four  last  prede- 
cessors ?  Each  of  them  honored  me  with  his  per- 
sonal friendship. 

Edward  E.  Hale. 


84  INSTALLATION   OF   MR.   CUCKSON. 

The  amazed  critics  of  his  own  time  generally 
tried  to  account  for  Channing's  power,  by  tracing 
out  the  clearness  and  directness  of  his  thought,  as 
if  his  were  to  be  counted  as  intellectual  victories. 
But  they  were  quite  wrong.  Here  was  a  child 
of  God,  —  who  had  found  out  that  he  was  a 
child  of  God,  and  delighted  in  the  relationship. 
Channing  was  a  mystic,  through  and  through, — 
using  that  word  in  its  proper  sense,  of  one  who  is 
possessed  by  the  Infinite  Spirit,  and  trusts  him- 
self to  the  inspiration.  The  eager  hopes  and 
prayers,  especially  of  the  early  years  of  his  biog- 
raphy, are  to  be  remembered  with  any  of  those 
most  prized  among  the  most  devout  saints,  as 
A  Kempis,  or  Molinos,  or  Scougal,  or  the  Wesleys. 
And  here  was  the  real  power  which  moved  this 
century.  Omnipotence  is  apt  to  move  that  with 
which  it  has  to  do.  It  is  interesting  to  see  that 
men  did  not  make  this  real  to  themselves  until, 
after  his  death,  his  biography  was  published. 
Then  from  his  own  private  notes  they  could 
see  his  eagerness  to  accept  the  life  of  God  as  his 
life,  and  his  only  life.  So  resolute  is  the  human 
passion  for  ascribing  power  to  method,  or  to 
machinery,  instead  of  looking  to  the  Author  of 
Being  and  Fountain  of  Life,  that  the  earlier  critics 
of  Channing  preferred  to  speak  of  him  as  an  intel- 
lectual wonder. 

To  be  the  coadjutor  and  helper  of  such  a  saint 
came  the  young  Gannett,  who  honored  and  loved 


INSTALLATION   OF   MR.  CUCKSON.  85 

him.  With  absolute  self-renunciation,  he  was 
only  eager  to  do  in  this  church  what  it  was  con- 
venient for  Dr.  Channing  not  to  do.  That  Dr. 
Channing  might  be  well  and  able  to  do  his  part, 
and  that  Satan  might  be  beaten  wherever  he 
showed  his  head, — this  was  the  double  purpose 
to  which  this  young  man  consecrated  his  daily 
life.  And  he  took  care  to  make  himself  of  no 
reputation  as  he  took  that  double  duty.  I  re- 
member so  well  how  with  his  quick  step  and 
firm,  erect  carriage,  hair  black  as  the  raven,  and 
words  rapid  and  sharp,  he  would  enter  any  of  our 
pulpits,  and  how  he  controlled  his  hearers  !  Cer- 
tainly we  boys  wanted  nothing  better  than  we 
heard  from  him,  even  in  the  beginning. 

And  his  work  afterwards  —  I  do  not  speak  of 
this  church  only,  but  for  the  Unitarian  church 
of  New  England,  which  he  led  —  was  that  of 
enlivenment.  He  knew  no  such  word  as  "fail" 
in  those  days.  He  accepted  for  the  Unitarian 
church  the  moral  and  intellectual  leadership 
which  in  those  days  people  were  not  unwilling 
to  give  it.  He  had  the  great  advantage,  for  that 
position,  of  a  fixed  and  definite  theology,  —  of 
which  he  was  as  sure  as  an  astronomer  is  of  the 
law  of  the  attraction  of  gravitation.  To  see  any  of 
the  youngsters  fall  away  from  this  was  terrible  to 
him,  but  never  did  he  doubt  that  truth  is  truth  and 
must  prevail. 

Of  Mr.  Ware — with  our  fresh  memories  of  his 


96  INSTALLATION   OF   MR.    CUCKSON. 

life,  and  of  what  seemed  a  death  too  early — it  is 
harder  to  speak  in  this  presence.  Those  who 
only  knew  him  in  the  years  —  all  too  few  —  of  his 
work  in  this  church,  know  one  who  was  carrying 
on  a  daily  martyr  struggle  against  concealed  dis- 
ease, so  manfully,  that  people  would  speak  to 
him  as  if  he  were  in  high  health,  when  he  was 
suffering  as  by  no  chance  he  would  say.  But  we, 
who  had  known  him  from  boyhood,  like  to  think 
of  those  earlier  days  of  vigor ;  of  his  visits  to  the 
army,  in  the  field  or  in  the  camp ;  of  his  large 
view  of  the  situation  there,  and  of  the  duty  of  the 
church  behind  the  army.  His  call  to  those  at 
home,  to  do  their  duty  to  those  under  canvas 
or  in  the  entrenchments,  was  a  clarion  cry.  And 
it  would  be  safe  and  fair  to  say  that  to  Henry 
Bellows,  Charles  Lowe,  and  John  Ware,  more  than 
to  any  other  of  our  preachers,  did  the  Unitarian 
church  owe  the  new  sense  of  its  lead,  of  the  cen- 
tral dignity  of  its  position  in  national  life,  which 
culminated  in  the  organization  of  our  National 
Conference.  It  is  hardly  to  be  spoken  of  as  a 
coincidence,  it  was  rather  the  record  of  a  necessary 
connection  of  time,  that  the  first  authoritative  con- 
vention of  the  united  Unitarian  church  of  America 
was  held  in  New  York,  on  the  same  day  when 
Richmond  surrendered  to  the  Union  army. 

And  of  our  dear  friend  Herford,  who  has  left 
us  now  to  take  up  harder  duty  in  England,  — 
with  our  fresh  memories  of  his  cordial  love,  — 


INSTALLATIOX   OF   MR.  CUCKSON.  87 

there  is  no  need  to  speak.  Fit  workman  indeed 
was  he,  in  a  field  where  such  noble  workmen  had 
gone  before  him.  And  the  living  force  of  this 
church  to-day,  and  its  vigorous  equipment  of  men, 
women,  and  means  for  worship,  for  charity,  for 
education,  and  for  hospitality,  make  a  token 
which  all  men  understand,  of  the  efficiency  and 
spirit  which  he  consecrated  to  the  work  of  this 
church,  and  to  no  work  beside.  What  this  church 
ought  to  do  in  the  largest  interpretation  of  its 
service,  — what  the  Unitarian  church  of  America 
ought  to  do,  —  to  that  he  would  give  every  throb 
of  his  pulse,  every  thought,  every  act,  every 
minute.  For  any  other  duty  or  exigency,  no ! 
Here  was  his  place  and  opportunity.  And  we 
know  how  large  he  made  his  place  and  how  noble 
his  opportunity. 

It  is  worth  while  merely  to  call  together  such 
memories  of  four  lives  so  different  in  their 
method,  but  all  so  intensely  alive.  It  is  worth 
while,  because  our  business  to-right  is  to  look 
back  on  those  lessons  which  this  church  has 
learned  and  taught,  so  that  we  may  translate  their 
lessons  into  the  language,  yes,  and  the  purposes,  of 
this  half-century  before  us.  Of  that  half-century 
you  younger  men  and  women  must  highly  re- 
solve to-night  that  you  will  be  among  the  spiritual, 
and  so  the  moral,  leaders.  If  we  are  to  take  in  at 
one  view  seventy  or  eighty  years,  I  could  hardly 
name  any  one  church  in  Christendom  where,  Sunday 


88  INSTALLATION   OF   MR.    CUCKSON. 

after  Sunday,  men  have  taken  such  a  view  as  has 
been  taken  here  of  the  present  advance  of  the 
Idea  —  of  the  victory  of  the  Spirit.  Dr.  Channing's 
hearers  wxrj  thinking  of  one  line  of  advance;  in 
a  way,  Dr.  Gannett's  were  thinking  of  another ; 
Mr.  Ware's  had  yet  another  picture  before  them  ; 
and  Dr.  Herford  spoke — of  course  he  spoke  — 
in  an  atmosphere  different  once  more.  But  this 
church,  in  those  eighty  years,  has  never  had  a 
minister  which  told  it  that  it  had  "entered  into 
its  rest."  Nobody  ever  stood  here  to  tell  this 
congregation  that  they  were  to  forget  the  things 
that  are  before,  while  they  reached  back  to  those 
things  that  are  behind.  That  is  the  duty,  alas  !  of 
some  churches,  or  they  are  told  so ;  but  not  of  the 
church  in  Federal  street  or  in  Arlington  street. 
And  that  which  is  incumbent,  of  course,  in  every 
installation  festival  is  specially  agreeable  here, 
because  specially  hopeful.  It  is  always  pleasant 
to  prophesy  when  there  is  so  good  a  chance  that 
prophecy  will  come  true. 

It  is  seventy-three  years  last  Thursday  since,  at 
Baltimore,  Mr.  Channing,  then  only  thirty-nine 
years  old,  preached  the  celebrated  sermon,  well 
remembered,  which  distinctly  announced  to  the 
American  church  that  the  little  company  of  or- 
ganized Unitarians  had  a  mission  which  it  meant 
to  perform.  Up  till  that  time  most  people,  even 
religious  people,  had  persuaded  themselves  that 
the  truth  micfht  be  left  to  overcome  error  within 


INSTALLATION   OF   MR.  CUCKSON.  89 

the  church,  gradually  and  without  conflict.  Peo- 
ple tried  to  think  that  old  fables  would  die  of 
themselves  if  they  were  only  let  alone ;  and  that 
all  this  was  so  certain  that  no  one  need  make  a 
fuss  about  it.  But  at  the  Baltimore  dedication 
Mr.  Channing  blew  the  bugle  of  attack.  Or  that 
would  be  a  better  figure  which  said,  that  this  quiet 
champion,  in  the  presence  of  a  curious  company 
of  people,  who  wondered  what  this  old-new  doc- 
trine, or  new-old  doctrine,  was,  walked  quietly 
through  the  ancient,  dignified  temple  of  Calvinism, 
and  there,  in  the  presence  of  decorous  priests 
who  hoped  the  thing  would  outlast  their  time, 
struck  in  the  face  every  one  of  the  idols,  on  the 
right  hand  and  on  the  left  hand,  as  he  passed 
them  by.  It  was  not  contempt  any  longer.  It 
was  not  silence  any  longer.  It  was  square  attack 
—  attack  all  along  the  line.  What  was  worse,  he 
justified  what  he  had  done,  in  statement  and  logic 
which  no  one  could  overthrow. 

Seventy-three  years  have  passed  since  then. 
The  idols  still  exist,  perhaps.  I  have  been  told 
that  some  of  them  can  be  found  in  museums. 
Perhaps  it  is  so.  I  do  not  know.  I  do  know 
that  no  one  worships  them.  I  know  that  there 
are  no  priests  who  like  to  be  reminded  of  them. 
I  know  that  the  church  of  America,  from  the  left 
wing  to  the  right,  has  diligently  and  discreetly 
packed  its  Calvinism  wholly  out  of  the  way.  I 
think  there  are  some  written  creeds  which  avow 


go  INSTALLATION   OF   MR.    CUCKSON. 

it ;  but  in  these  days  we  are  told  that  the  creeds 
and  articles  of  churches  are  of  no  consequence. 
I  have  even  been  told  by  the  highest  authority 
that  their  presence  in  books,  once  regarded  as 
standards,  is  mere  matter  of  the  bookbinder ! 

Of  New  England  I  know  more.  I  am  fond  of 
repeating  the  story  —  which  expresses  the  precise 
truth  —  of  what  Dean  Stanley  said,  when  he  re- 
turned to  England  from  his  visit  here.  "  Of 
course,"  he  said,  "  I  went  to  hear  them  preach 
whenever  I  could,  chiefly  in  the  Evangelical 
churches.  Many  men  I  heard  in  many  pulpits 
of  different  names,  but  the  preacher  was  always 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson."  No  man  can  observe 
the  working  theology  of  our  time  v/ithout  seeing 
that  our  great  idealist  of  this  century  is  every- 
where the  leader.  And  no  one  notes  wisely  the 
movement  in  any  church  who  does  not  see  that  it 
is  an  aggressive  movement,  seeking  to  build  up 
the  Kingdom  of  God. 

True,  there  are  men  who  would  tell  you,  as  they 
would  have  told  you  a  hundred  years  ago,  that 
the  chief  business  of  the  pulpit  is  in  its  appeal 
to  separate  hearers,  for  the  saving  of  their  sepa- 
rate souls.  But  even  these  men  would  say  that 
they  want  to  save  the  soul  of  the  separate  hearer 
so  that  that  hearer  may  go  to  work  as  an  apostle, 
to  bring  in  the  Kingdom  of  God.  They  may  cry, 
"  Repent  ye  !  "  but  like  John  the  Baptist  they  cry, 
"  Repent  ye,  because  the   Kingdom  of  God  is   at 


INSTALLATION   OF   MR.  CUCKSON.  9 1 

hand!"  That  God  is  the  present  ruler,  that  God 
is  immanent  in  all  life,  —  this  is  the  religious  doc- 
trine of  our  time.  From  cast  to  west,  —  from 
the  right  wing  to  the  left  wing,  —  from  the  pulpit 
of  the  Church  of  Rome  to  the  exhortation  of  a 
Quaker  conference,  this  is  the  statement  and 
appeal.  In  such  an  outlook  as  we  are  attempting 
now;  in  your  reconsecration  of  yourselves  to- 
night as  a  church  of  Christ;  in  the  reconse- 
cration of  this  man  to  the  ministry  of  Christ,  — 
the  dominant  question  is :  How  can  these  eternal 
truths  best  be  brought  into  the  impending  move- 
ment of  the  next  century?  How  are  we  to  lift 
men,  in  the  terrible  wealth  and  prosperity  which 
belongs  to  their  physical  successes?  How  are  we 
to  lift  them  away  from  the  temptations  of  dust 
and  mud  and  smoke,  into  the  infinite  life  of  the 
sons  of  God? 

It  is  clear  enough  that  it  is  a  game  of  giants 
which  we  look  forward  to.  The  man  who  had 
only  his  hand  to  fight  with,  has  a  club  to  swing  in 
the  future.  The  conspirator  who  had  to  be  satis- 
fied with  words,  finds  now  that  he  can  make 
dynamite  in  his  kitchen.  The  workman  who  was 
glad  to  work  twelve  hours,  is  able  to  make  his  own 
terms  for  eight.  This  is  simply  to  say  that  man 
has  now  a  hundred  times  the  power  for  good  or 
for  evil  that  he  had  sixty  years  ago.  If,  as  we 
here  all  suppose,  this  power  can  be  controlled 
by  laws ;   if  it  is  to  be,  as  on  the  whole  it  always 


9^  INSTALLATION    OF   MR.    CUCKSON. 

has  been,  swayed  by  moral  agencies,  —  its  in- 
crease is  simply  a  benediction,  and  is  one  more 
step  forward  and  upward  of  the  world.  But  all 
the  more  have  those  who  lead  the  world,  or 
who  mean  to,  to  find  how  the  moral  forces  are 
to  be  used,  where  they  come  from,  and  how  they 
shall  be  proclaimed. 

This  may  be  said,  as  the  basis  of  all  our 
answers,  that  church  and  pulpit  have  given  up 
everyv,^here  the  attitude  of  defiance.  No  pulpit 
threatens  anybody  now.  Hell  may  be  kept  in  the 
creed ;  but  in  appeal  it  is  wisely  left  in  the  back- 
ground. On  the  other  hand,  in  all  commun- 
ions the  appeal  is  made  to  man's  affections,  to 
his  hopes,  and  more  and  more  to  his  judgment. 

This  is  the  more  important  because  none  of  the 
great  floods  of  enthusiasm  in  history  which  have 
successfully  united  men  and  compelled  them  to 
move  together  have  been  swayed  by  men's  ter- 
rors. Peter  the  Hermit  roused  all  Europe  to 
march  to  recover  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  by  tell- 
ing Europe  how  unjustly  the  Christians  were 
treated  on  the  very  spot  where  the  Master  died. 
He  did  not  alarm  his  hearers.  John  Gough,  Haw- 
kins, and  the  other  Washingtonian  leaders  in  1840 
compelled  men  to  tread  under  foot  the  tempta- 
tion of  liquor,  and  combined  them  in  a  common 
cause  by  showing  to  them  that  they  might  be 
leaders  where  they  were  slaves,  and  begging  them 
to  work  to  lift  others  from  their  ruin.     The  great 


INSTALLATION   OF   MR.  CUCKSON.  93 

uprising  of  the  North,  in  l86i,  was  anything 
but  a  spasm  of  fear.  Nor  was  it,  in  the  outset,  a 
determination  to  end  slavery.  It  was  the  deter- 
mination even  higher,  to  assert  the  majesty  of  the 
nation.  The  real  rulers  of  the  nation  had,  gen- 
erally, from  the  time  when  it  was  formed,  left  the 
rule  of  it  to  the  Southern  oligarchy,  which  was, 
as  it  is,  willing  enough  to  take  in  hand  that  care. 
But  that  oligarchy  at  last  stepped  too  far,  and  the 
giant  woke.  The  people  asserted  its  place,  and 
the  pretender  was,  for  twenty  years,  nowhere.  In 
all  these  cases,  the  appeal  of  the  leaders  was  to 
the  nobler  sentiments  of  the  rank  and  file,  and  not 
to  their  fears  of  hunger,  of  pain,  or  of  other 
penalty. 

Now  the  question  for  you  who  have  the  next 
half-century  to  direct  is  what  the  form  of  ap- 
peal shall  be  by  which  you  shall  embody  power 
which  is  clearly  matchless,  if  only  you  can  win 
it  on  your  side. 

The  Saviour  of  men,  coming  into  social  con- 
ditions wholly  different,  begged  men,  advised  them, 
commanded  them,  to  turn  from  all  other  theories 
of  life  and  to  proclaim  the  law  of  God  as  the 
present  law  of  village,  city,  home,  synagogue, 
court,  and  camp.  "  Go  and  preach  the  Kingdom 
of  God,"  he  said,  "  and  preach  it  all  over  this 
world."  That  voice's  echo  has  not  died.  Your 
question  in  the  business  you  have  in  hand,  for 
these  fifty  years,  is    to   find  out  how  that  appeal 


94  INSTALLATION   OF   MR.    CUCKSOX. 

can  be  made  to  most  purpose  now,  and  then  to 
make  it  with  all  your  might  day  by  day  on  those 
lines. 

In  that  business  we  have  a  good  analogy,  and 
I  should  say  a  fair  working  example,  in  the 
most  remarkable  single  element  of  our  national 
strength.  I  mean  the  absolute  loyalty  of  the  sep- 
arate citizen  to  the  country, —  unless  he  be  wholly 
spoiled  by  inherited  wealth,  —  and  his  certainty  of 
her  power  and  success.  The  earlier  travellers  from 
Europe  all  noticed  this,  and  it  enraged  them.  You 
toiled  over  execrable  roads  for  a  day,  travelling 
through  a  wilderness.  At  night  you  slept  in  a 
dirty  cabin,  the  guest  of  a  man  who  could  hardly 
speak  his  own  language.  This  man  was  using  an 
axe  which  was  made  in  England ;  he  carried  a 
gun  which  was  made  in  England;  his  very 
ploughshare  and  hoe  were  made  .  in  England ; 
and  yet,  infallibly,  he  told  his  tired  and  annoyed 
guest  that  America  was  yet  to  "whip  every  nation 
in  the  world,"  —  that  she  was  to  go  beyond  them 
all  in  civilization,  and  art,  and  invention.  When 
he  was  asked  to  compare  his  squalid  cabin  with 
the  home  which  for  some  reason  his  guest  had 
left,  he  said  he  did  not  care  for  that  contrast ;  that 
America  would  be  the  greatest  nation  in  the  world, 
that  he  knew  it,  and  that  his  guest  had  only  to  wait 
a  little  and  he  would  know  it  too. 

This  intense  arrogance,  naturally  enough,  was 
wholly  unintelligible    to    people   who    came  from 


IX3TALLATION   OF   MR.  CUCKSON.  95 

feudal  countries.  Certainly  they  had  never  seen 
it  at  home.  No  peasant  in  England,  or  France, 
or  Germany  spoke  with  any  such  prophetic 
intimation.  And  there  was  something  mad- 
dening to  a  man  who  had,  for  some  reason,  left 
all  the  luxuries  of  civilization  behind  him,  to  be 
told  that  all  these  were  really  of  no  account, 
compared  with  the  glories  which  were  about  to 
dawn  on  the  cabin  in  which  he  was  half  starved, 
and  on  the  wilderness  through  which  he  was  yet 
to  travel. 

But,  to  look  on  the  other  side,  there  is  some- 
thing really  sublime  in  this  arrogance,  when  one 
observes  its  source.  For  the  first  time  in  the 
world's  history,  such  men  as  this  braggart  savage 
had  been  admitted  to  every  privilege  of  humanity. 
He  had  been  told  to  hew  his  own  way,  to  build 
his  own  house,  to  live  his  own  life.  Feudal  cus- 
toms, feudal  religion  among  the  rest,  had  always, 
till  now,  bidden  him  do  his  duty  in  that  condition 
of  life  in  which  God  had  placed  him.  Yes ;  and 
feudal  customs  had  bound  him  to  that  condition 
very  tightly.  Now  this  new  nation  bade  him  "  go 
as  he  pleased."  True,  she  gave  him  nothing  to 
go  with.  That  was  his  affair.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  if  she  gave  no  cross  of  honor  to  any  Ath- 
elstan,  she  had  no  manacle  for  any  Wamba.  Fool 
or  baron,  they  were  all  one  to  her.  Let  each  man 
live  his  own  life,  and  make  his  own  career,  she 
said.     Now  it  was  a  native    instinct  of  gratitude 


g6  INSTALLATION    OF    MR.    CUCKSON. 

which  compelled  each  such  Wamba,  the  son  of 
Witless,  each  man  so  blessed  and  gifted,  to  praise 
the  mother  who  had  so  blessed  him.  And  it  was 
an  instinct  which  has  proved  true,  by  which  he 
foretold  the  unanimous  service  to  her  of  her  sons. 
As  it  has  proved,  the  material  wealth  of  this  nation 
does  not  rest  primarily  in  her  mines  or  in  her 
crops.  It  is  in  that  system  of  open  promotion,  by 
which  that  man  is  sure  to  come  to  the  front  who 
knows  how  to  smelt  the  mineral,  or  to  reap  the 
harvest,  and  is  industrious  enough  to  do  so. 

Now,  one  has  nothing  but  laughter  for  the  ar- 
rogant boast  of  the  half-clad  frontiersman.  But 
one  does  see  at  the  same  time  what  unsubsidized 
power  the  nation  has  won,  when,  by  her  fundamen- 
tal system,  she  controls  and  commands,  yes,  to  the 
very  last  throb  and  drop,  the  united  forces  of  every 
such  man  within  her  borders. 

Take  that  little  analogy  now,  and  carry  it  to 
the  range  and  field  vastly  higher  and  larger,  with 
which  we  are  concerned,  in  our  problem  here : 
How  we  shall  lead  the  next  half-century.  We 
have  abandoned  the  narrow  ground  with  which  the 
old  church  was  satisfied.  We,  too,  in  the  Liberal 
communions,  have  announced,  and  shall  announce, 
to  all  men  that  they  are  nothing  less  than  the  sons 
of  God  ;  to  all  women,  that  they  are  his  daughters. 
The  older  church,  almost  with  a  droll  grimace, 
reserving  for  salvation  and  eternal  blessing  all  her 
ordained  clergy,  bade  them  tell  all  the  rest  of  man- 


INSTALLATION   OF   MR.  CUCKSON.  97 

kind  that  they  were  born  in  sin  and  corfceived  in 
iniquity,  and  that  nine-tenths  of  them  would  cer- 
tainly be  damned  in  eternal  torment.  All  the 
more,  she  said,  must  the  other  tenth  turn  and  live, 
and  proclaim  to  the  nine-tenths,  and  to  each  other, 
the  present  love  of  a  present  God,  and  his  present 
kingdom.  But  can  we  wonder  if  the  answer  to 
that  demand  was  variable  and  fluttering?  Is  it 
st-range  that  when  men  heard  such  an  invitation, 
one  turned  to  his  farm  and  another  to  his  mer- 
chandise? Had  the  church,  in  a  word,  any  right 
to  expect  much  enthusiasm  in  the  world's  reply? 

No.  But  let  the  teachers  of  the  world  take  up  in 
good  faith,  and  to  the  outer  end,  the  Saviour's  ap- 
peal and  direction.  Let  them  go  into  the  highways 
and  the  byways.  Let  them  call  the  vinedresser,  and 
the  harlot,  and  the  publican.  Let  them  say,  "  Ye 
are  all  kings  and  all  priests,"  believing  it  them- 
selves. Let  them  say  to  the  publican,  "  God 
makes  this  demand  upon  you  ;  "  and  to  the  har- 
lot, "  God  makes  this  demand  upon  you."  The 
century  which  dares  make  that  demand  has  a  right, 
which  no  other  century  has  deserved,  to  an  enthusi- 
astic reply.  It  has  myriads  to  call  en  7nasse,  where 
the  old  theologians  were  recruiting  here  and  there 
a  man  vi^ho  could  be  tempted  by  a  ribbon  or  a 
shilling.  And  it  is  likely  to  learn,  as  no  century 
has  learned  before,  what  the  Master  of  Men  meant, 
when,  to  a  flock  where  every  sheep  and  every 
lamb  tried  to  do  his  duty,  he  said  in   such  solemn 


98  INSTALLATION    OF   MR.    CUCKSON. 

prophecy :  "  Your  Father  shall  give  you  the 
kingdom." 

That  religion  belongs  to  all  sorts  and  conditions 
of  men, — to  sinner  as  well  as  saint,  to  blackleg 
as  well  as  gentleman, — that  is  our  gospel.  The 
decorous  selection  of  a  clergy  with  the  great  name 
"  the  church,"  as  if  the  rest  must  not  share  in 
sacraments,  must  not  understand  theology,  nay, 
need  not  believe  in  creeds,  —  this  is  to  be  done 
with  forever.  God  has  work  to  do ;  they  are 
all  to  be  taught  this.  You  can  do  it.  They  are 
to  be  thus  encouraged.  .You  must  do  it.  They 
are  to  be  thus  warned.  And  every  mother's  son  of 
us  has  the  right  to  warn  them,  as,  if  the  village 
were  in  flames  at  night,  every  man  who  is  awake 
has  a  right  to  cry,  "  Fire  !  "  We  are  not  rallying 
for  our  philanthropies  or  our  educations  only 
those  who  know  where  sin  came  from,  or  those 
who  can  explain  evolution.  It  is  not  the  theolo- 
gians only  whom  we  are  to  enlist.  It  is  the  sons 
and  daughters  of  God  ;  it  is  every  one  who  draws 
a  breath  of  his  air  or  who  lives  in  his  sunshine,  who 
is  to  listen  for  his  word  and  to  bring  in  his  kingdom. 
And  they  are,  each  and  all,  to  understand  that  the 
coming  of  the  kingdom  depends  not  only  upon 
Him,  but  upon  them  as  much  and  as  well. 

The  work  is  thus  to  be  done  by  the  whole  family 
of  God.  It  is  not  left  to  any  selected  hierarchy, 
not  left  to  the  work  of  any  remnant,  designated 
by    some    apostolic    succession.      To    every    one 


INSTALLATION   OF   MR.  CUCKSON.  99 

we  may  appeal,  expecting  from  every  one  some 
assistance. 

This  is  the  first  characteristic  of  the  rehgious 
appeal  of  the  next  half-century;  and  with  it,  of 
course,  belongs  first,  second,  last,  and  always,  the 
statement,  perfectly  familiar  in  the  first  century, 
but  new  in  the  nineteenth,  that  God  is  on  our  side. 
Nature  is  with  us  and  not  against  us.  The  power 
that  rules  the  universe  loves  us  and  does  not  hate 
us.  We  need  no  longer  speak  of  the  church  as 
the  huddled  fragment  floating  on  the  logs  of  a 
drifting  raft  where  the  world  has  perished.  We 
speak  to  those  who  are  born  of  God  and  to  God 
return,  who  live  in  his  life,  love  with  his  love, 
rest  in  his  arms,  tell  him  everything,  and  receive 
everything  from  a  Father's  perfect  tenderness. 
Do  we  tell  them  that  they  are  fellow-workers 
with  God  ?  We  tell  them  as  well  that  God  is  a 
fellow-worker  with  them.  Perhaps  it  is  in  this  ap- 
peal, more  than  in  any  other  which  we  have  to 
make,  by  which  we  surprise  those  who  have  been 
awe-struck,  I  might  say  ■  paralyzed,  under  the 
pressure  of  mediaeval  theologies.  But  whether 
men  take  it  simply  or  with  surprise,  we  are  thus  to 
appeal  always.  As  Mr.  Brown  said  so  well,  "  We 
teach  them  the  humanity  of  God  while  we  teach 
them  the  divinity  of  man."  We  teach  them  that 
in  those  processes  which  we  call  the  processes  of 
present  Nature,  as  well   as   in   work  of  His,  long 


lOO     INSTALLATION  OF  MR.  CUCKSON. 

ages  ago,  there  is  the  present  love  of  a  Holy 
Spirit,  which  is  ready  to  inspire  the  baby  in  his 
play,  the  smith  at  his  anvil,  the  speaker  in  the 
forum,  the  nurse  at  the  bedside,  or  the  seaman  on 
the  ocean.     God  is  with  us,  and  we  are  with  him. 

Our  Hungarian  friends,  with  their  own  fire  and 
pathos,  told  me  the  story  of  their  first  victory, 
centuries  ago,  in  Kolosvar.  Their  great  prophet 
of  the  North,  who  did  not  even  speak  their  won- 
derful Magyar  language  well,  appealed  to  them  as 
the  children  of  the  living  God.  He  gave  them 
some  sense  —  alas,  no  man  wrote  down  the  words  ! 
—  of  what  it  is  to  come  to  God  in  your  own 
prayer,  with  no  priest  between ;  of  what  it  is  to 
trust  in  the  infinite  strength,  and  in  no  transfer  of 
power  to  machinery.  Speaking  with  God's  voice 
himself,  he  spoke  to  God's  children  of  God's 
present  power.  And  they,  on  the  moment,  with 
a  storm  of  passionate  conviction,  lifted  him  in  their 
arms  from  the  stone,  which  they  still  show,  where 
he  was  addressing  them.  They  carried  him  into 
the  cathedral  of  their  city;  and  to  frightened 
priests,  looking  back  to  some  old  records  for  their 
information,  they  cried  out  that  they  had  here  a 
prophet  of  the  living  God,  who  was  to  speak  now 
the  eternal  truth.  Priests  of  an  apostolic  succes- 
sion and  machinery  of  worship  vanished  at  the 
cry,  from  the  place,  and  were  gone  for  centuries. 
It  became  a  place  which  should  proclaim  the 
fatherhood  of  God  and  the  brotherhood  of  man. 


INSTALLATION   OF   MR.  CUCKSON.  lOI 

One  does  not  wonder  at  such  a  miracle  when  'one 
remembers  the  power  by  which  it  was  effected. 

We  have  much  the  same  miracle  to  work  to- 
day, —  not  in  driving  out  priests  from  their 
sanctuaries,  but  in  bringing  the  sense  of  God  into 
the  workshop  and  school  and  cabin ;  into  the 
mining  of  silver,  and  the  weaving  of  cotton,  and 
the  carrying  of  corn.  The  immanent  presence  of 
the  living  God,  —  is  this  the  gospel  which  we  are 
to  preach?  Yes;  and  it  is  as  well  the  power  by 
which  we  are  to  proclaim  that  gospel.  And  we 
need  ask  few  questions  as  to  method  or  organiza- 
tion, when  that  Spirit  sends  us  forth,  conquering 
and  to  conquer. 

As  I  see  the  forward  look  with  which  men 
regard  the  new  century,  it  seems  to  me  that  all 
their  drift  is  hopeful.  The  fixed  habit  of  men,  of 
all  sorts  and  conditions,  seems  to  me  to  be  hope, 
and  not  despair.  *'  You  will  be  wise,"  I  heard  a 
great  man  of  finance  say,  "  if  in  your  investments 
you  bet  on  the  country."  It  seems  to  me  that 
I  see  the  same  disposition  to  "  bet  on  the  world;  " 
that  men  look  forward  cheerfully,  and  look  back- 
ward less.  Every  scheme  of  social  reform,  though 
it  seem  to  me  absurd,  and  may  be  absurd,  means 
that  men  are  determined  that  the  Kingdom  shall 
come.  They  may  not  put  it  in  those  words,  but  that 
is  their  hope  and  their  purpose.  Digging  their  long 
trench  in  Sinaloa;  publishing  their  new  plans  of 
social  order  in  New  York    or  Chicago;   studying 


I02  INSTALLATION    OF   MR.    CUCKSON. 

their  Bellamy,  or  writing  new  ones  which  they 
think  better,  —  everywhere  the  magic  of  hope  stays 
up  the  life,  which  would  have  been  abject  and 
powerless  were  it  left  to  despair.  To  direct,  as  to 
encourage  such  hope,  and  to  lead  such  enterprise, 
is  the  special  business  of  the  people  like  you, 
who  have,  with  your  eyes  open,  accepted  and 
professed  a  religion  of  hope,  in  the  place  and  on  the 
ruins  of  a  theology  of  darkness.  It  is  ours  to 
see  that  such  plans  shall  not  be  absurd,  that 
such  prophecies  shall  not  disappoint  themselves. 
This  we  can  only  do,  as  we  live  ourselves  in  actual 
communion  with  a  loving  God, —  as  for  ourselves 
we  determine  that  we  will  not  live,  —  live  with 
him,  for  ourselves  alone,  and  as  with  him  and 
for  other  men  —  we  make  these  homes  and  work- 
shops of  ours  to  be  a  present  heaven. 

We  consecrate  ourselves  anew  to-night  with  such 
high  determination.  Gladly  we  intrust  this  church, 
with  its  noble  history,  to  such  ministry  for  another 
century  —  of  faith  an'd  hope  and  love.  Its  new 
ministry  asks  no  better  omens  than  its  history 
afifords.  A  church  which  definitely  and  distinctly 
proclaims  its  determination  to  follow  where  this 
present  Holy  Spirit  leads,  need  ask  for  no  inferior 
ally. 


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